• Michael Mullins
  • Michael "The Bard" Mullin
  • "The Bard of Foremass"
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    Poems
    To Pansies

    Pretty little pansies!
    With your velvet bonnets on,
    Nodding to and fro.
    Dreamy little fairies,
    What are you think of?
    What do you know?

    Pretty little pansies!
    I am not a flower still
    I would love to know
    Tender poet fancies,
    Through your wise and solemn heads,
    That come and go.

    Pretty little pansies!
    You are dreams of loveliness,
    Ah, but Death has no
    Pity for you, pansies!
    Pretty though you be, alas!
    Down, down you go

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

    The Daisy

    Behold the pretty daisy,
    So simple and so sweet,
    Which men so often trample,
    Unnoticed, ‘neath their feet.
    So humble and so modest,
    It decks the grassy sod,
    And greets its own dear Maker –
    The Universal God.

    But God-made man too often,
    In pride and ignorance,
    Admires his own perfections,
    But looks on God’s askance;
    Proud man! Blind man! Thy antics
    The daisies blush to see;
    They hang their heads in mourning
    O God-like man! For thee.

    Behold this little daisy!
    Not all earth’s vaunted power,
    Not all earth’s wise and great men
    Could make this simple flower.
    None could, save God, create it –
    The daisy, shy and sweet,
    Which men so often trample,
    Unnoticed, ‘neath their feet.

    Michael Mullin
    ‘The Bard of Foremass’

    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

    The Wood In Autumn

    This wood is lonely; scarce a sound is heard;
    Silent the wind is; silent every bird
    That made this solitude with music ring,
    When buds were bursting in the days of spring,

    Nature seems here asleep; each tiny sound
    But makes the hush of autumn more profound.
    Pensive o’er paths leaf-carpeted I stroll,
    And melancholy fancies fill my soul.

    Come graveyard thoughts and visions of decay
    To make the dim, grey paths more dim and grey;
    But sunbeams here and there invade the gloom –
    As dreams of youth the path of age illume.

    Among these trees, whose great arms are upheld
    In attitude of prayer, like saints of old,
    There’s a low rustle, lone and tremulous –
    The leaves of Memory might rustle thus.

    Lonely the wood: yet there’s a charm sublime
    In the sad place and in the solemn time;
    A mystic something, which attracts the soul,
    And gives it energy to seek the Goal.

    –

    Michael Mullin

    ‘The Bard of Foremass’

    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.