The Yearn For Home

My memory takes me back long years in time To boyhood years long, long before my prime When I was twelve years going on thirteen But since so many leaves gone with the stream. When I was young and happy and care-free Before the wanderlust got hold of me The wanderlust that beckoned me away The far off hills are green or so they say. My mum and dad their bones rest six foot down In cemetery just east of Millstreet Town And some of my brothers and sisters not on their native earth Like me they live far from their Land of birth I'm a stranger here and mine's a foreign face But strangely I do not feel out of place Where Sherbrooke gums reach upwards towards the sky And white backed magpie flutes his notes of joy. I'd love to go back home just for the Spring To hear again the wildborn chaffinch sing And hear the redbreast pipe his melody His robin song on flowering hawthorn tree. To hear again the joyful dipper trill On rock that jut out of the mountain rill And barn swallows back from places far away Fly o'er the flower decked meadows all the day. The moorhen with her chicks swim to and fro In river pool where Finnow water flow A brief sun shower the sun shines through the gray And butterflies flit around the flowers of May. I'm a stranger here and mine's a foreign face Though I don't feel a stranger in the place But like the swallow I'd like to take wing And fly back to my Homeland for the Spring.