The voices come to me from long ago <br />Of Nature's children that i used to know <br />I hear them sing on hedge and tree and bush <br />The robin and the blackbird and the thrush. <br /> <br />From April on the fields are lush and green <br />And wildflowers in their billions to be seen <br />And lambs bleat in the fields beside the hill <br />And the dipper he is singing in the rill. <br /> <br />The redwings have gone home to far away <br />And the hawthorns cloaked in their white flowers of May <br />And chaffinch pipes his happy notes to Spring <br />And swallows o'er the meadows fly and sing. <br /> <br />The curlew o'er the bogland flies around <br />And he flutes his finest o'er his breeding ground <br />He and his mate in the bog raise their family <br />And then fly off to their home by the sea. <br /> <br />At times far off and at other times quite near <br />The cuckoo's voice sweet music to the ear <br />Her egg in nest of smaller bird she lay <br />The only part in motherhood she play. <br /> <br />And at late evening when darkness cloaks the sky <br />The shy male snipe above the bogland fly <br />And with his wings and tail he makes a goat like sound <br />As through the night he flies around and round. <br /> <br />The voices come to me from long ago <br />Of Nature's children that i used to know <br />When Spring arrived and she shook her emerald gown <br />And she spread her green in the fields near Millstreet Town.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-voices-come-to-me/
