When Last I Heard The Dunnock Sing Poem by Francis Duggan

When last I heard the dunnock sing along the ditch of the bohreen
The snowdrops and the bluebells in clusters to be seen
And the hawthorn trees looked lovely in their white flowers of the May
But that was many years ago and many miles away.

The fields were full of wildflowers and everywhere looked lush and green
And the grass flattened by the waterway to tell where the floods had been
And though down the old bohreen I may never walk again
Of such a pleasant evening the memories remain.

When last I heard the dunnock sing in the leafy hedgerow
In the rushes of the headland the male pheasant did cuck and crow
And the dark brown white breasted dipper was singing in the rill
That babbled towards the river down the high field by the hill.

The little plain brown dunnock a bird I used to know
I heard him sing for the last time some twenty years ago
And perhaps in the hedgerow by the bohreen his descendant sings today
When Spring is in the old fields in a Country far away.