I pillow on this mountain’s breast my head.
As a child seeks its mother I have sought
This place of sweet repose; by pathways dread,
By thoroughfares with care and danger fraught.

I thank you, Bog-lark! For that song divine;
It trills me , while it humbles foolish pride
In my own songs. O, what are songs of mine
To songs of bog larks on a mountain side.

Through the deep summer silence breaks the scream
Of curlews, and the cackling of moor-hens,
After the cities’ din, ‘tis sweet to dream
Below that blue sky, and above those fens.

This mountain wind comes odorous and cool,
From distant valleys, over heather brown,
Across vast spaces. This is beautiful
To one long prisoned in a crowded town.

My spirit cramped within its cage of clay,
Soars with yon lark away to heaven above,
Larklike its offering of love to pay
To the Creator and the King of Love.

Michael Mullin ‘The Bard of Foremass’
Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

Why do thy leaves, O Beech, cling on?
When leaves of other trees have gone –
Gone to the dust, gone to their tomb,
‘Mid winter wrath, and autumn gloom.

Thy dead leaves wave like golden shields
O’er straw-roofed cots and snow-clad fields;
Defying rain and hail and frost –
Buffeted, torn, and tempest-tost.

Methinks that Love – the Love of mother,
Love of father, sister, brother –
Of each for all, and all for each,
Lives in thy bosom, gentle Beech!

Love which the God of Love has given,
That Love which binds the earth and heaven,
Abideth in no small degree
Among thy branches, leaves, and thee.

Even in death thy leaves remain
To shield thee from the hurricane –
Thou canst not bear to let them go –
Even in death – thou lovest so.

–

Michael Mullin

‘The Bard of Foremass’

Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

I found a  field of  beauty on a mountain –
One lone green field, ‘mid wastes of heather brown;
And long-beaked curlews, pert and pretty peewits
Went strutting up and down.

The sun was beaming down upon the green grass,
And on a host of daisies smiling up,
And on a wealth of dandelion blossoms,
And many a buttercup.

The cooling  bog-breeze passing o’er these beauties
Set them a-nodding gently to and fro;
They all seemed waltzing to some fairy music,
Mysterious and low.

The lark seemed loth to leave this field of beauty,
It took, indeed, its giddy upward track –
But soon the glory of the heav’n below it
Compelled it to come back.

Days passed.  I sought again this field of beauty;
But all the dandelion blooms were gone;
And lonely looked the buttercups and daisies
That still kept smiling on.

The bloom has gone – it saddened me to think it –
The fairest flowers may bow to Fate’s decree.
The  bloom has gone – but Beauty’s memory lingers
Within the soul of me.

–

Michael Mullin

‘The Bard of Foremass’

Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.