I Live Far From My Native Land Poem by Francis Duggan

I live far from my Native Land and Hibernia's windswept shore
And from my old home by the roadway from Millstreet to Rathmore
But in my flights of fancy I hear the silver tongued rill
Go babbling towards the river down the high fields by the hill
The songbirds of my younger years live in my memory
I hear them sing in grove and wood on hedgerow, bush and tree
And above the rushy meadow just a small speck in the sky
I hear the skylark carolling as upwards he does fly,
With Nature I first fell in love far north and far away
From this great southern Country where I grow old and gray
This is the Land of emu of wombat and of roo
Of rosella and lory and the black and the white cockatoo
Yet when I start visualizing my memory takes to wing
And in the flooded river I hear the dipper sing.