Hill Dweller Poem by Francis Duggan

There's little here for you brown hare there's little here to eat
There's little here save withered gorse and bitter mountain heath
So why not move to inland fields where grass grow green and sweet
And leave this wild and rugged hill your mountainy retreat? .

I hid behind a bunch of gorse and watched the mountain hare
As he nibbled at a tuft of heath of my presence unaware
He nibbled at a tuft of heath and fed his appetite
And filled his little belly with bitter mountain bite.

'Tis a quiet life he live up here he live a recluse life
Up here on lonely Clara hill where gorse and het grow rife
But then he is a mountain hare a loner and alone
A lover of the rugged hill the mountain is his home.

Then I showed myself it startled him and he scurried up the height
He kept on racing up the hill till he was out of sight
He raced on up the steep incline as if chased by greyhound
He could not have run faster had he been on level ground.

The breath of Winter still about and winds of March blow chill
Across the bleak unsheltered face of the desolate hill
On this Unspring like eve in March the wind sing lonesome ode
Above the slopes of Clara hill the mountain hare's abode.