Old Claraghatlea

I will always be a fellow from Claraghatlea and that is something I never could deny
And though I live a long way from the homeplace far even as the migrant wader fly
I think about the old home very often though far from there my bones may well yet lay
In flights of fancy I see the fields and hedgerows and the old home I visit every day.

Old Claraghatlea the Townland of my childhood from my thoughts it is never far away
I walk again in sunlit Summer meadows and to my nostrils come the scent of hay
And I can hear the old rill gently babbling and young birds chirping in the green hedgerow
And though it has been two decades since I left Millstreet on looking back it does not seem long ago.

In Claraghatlea I spent my youthful Seasons though on looking back so brief did seem my prime
And in the Townland within view of Clara mountain I first fell in love with Nature and with rhyme
The robin and the chaffinch I remember and the tiny brown wren with the big bird song
Despite my years of absence their voices I remember and their songs once heard one never could get wrong.

Whereever my life journey will lead me to old Claraghatlea will always follow me
Those old fields within view of Clara mountain in flights of fancy I will always see
I hear the loud coos of the wild wood pigeon and I hear the dipper singing in the rill
That babbles it's way down to the big river by hedgerows of the high fields by the hill.