The chaffinches are singing now in the groves of Lisheen <br />And the fields of Gneeveguilla have never looked so green <br />And wildflowers bloom by the narrow road that leads to Knocknagree <br />And blackbird builds her mossy nest on the fork of hawthorn tree. <br /> <br />In the fields of Gneeveguilla I heard the old man say <br />With my dad sixty years ago we tossed the new mown hay <br />We turned it with our two pronged pikes for the sun and wind to dry <br />When the sun was brightly shining in the Summer in July <br /> <br />But the wanderlust was in me and I yearned for far away <br />From the fields of Gneeveguilla where I tossed the new mown hay <br />And beyond old Gneeveguilla there were places to be seen <br />And the wander bug is restless in a fellow of eighteen. <br /> <br />In the fields of Gneeveguilla I remember in the Spring <br />The plain brown meadow pipit had his happy song to sing <br />And the swallows had returned home from warm Lands beyond the sea <br />To the place where they were born in for to raise their family. <br /> <br />Far from the meadows of his boyhood where he tossed the new mown hay <br />In this Land of gum and wattle he's grown old and tired and gray <br />And in that graveyard by the ocean his remains destined to lay <br />From Sliabh Luachra in east Kerry more than half a World away.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-fields-of-gneeveguilla/
