I sit and gaze upon the sky;
My thoughts are with the days gone by –
The happy days when you and I,
Dear brother John,
Were joyful as the larks that fly
To greet the dawn.

Now oftentimes my thoughts I cast
Into the peaceful pleasant past,
Whose pleasures were too sweet to last;
Truth said the song –
That happiness still flies too fast,
While grief stays long.

In this bright, rosy month of June,
When fields are fair, and zephyrs croon
‘Mong leafy boughs; at sultry noon,
Or evening cool,
Or when high rides the gentle moon;
My mind is full.

Of memories of summers fled –
Of what you did, and what you said,
Each sight I see, each path I tread,
Each sound I hear,
Recalls some memory of some dead
Departed year.

All in youth’s hopeful, sunny time,
Streams we did wade, and mountains climb,
Surveying Nature’s charms sublime
Around displayed;
Then I’d recite some new-born rhyme
Which I had made.

Far in that city’s surging throng,
I know you’re sometimes thinking long,
To roam again these scenes among;
You’re feeling lone
For thrush’s, lark’s and linnet’s song
In sweet Tyrone.

May God still keep our memories green –
Green as the mantle of our Queen:
These memories of what has been
Will ever be
An ocean-spanning bridge between
Yourself and me.

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

The last two lines of the last verse is also in another poem written to P.D.

John and Patrick (P.D.) both done the exam in Cloughfin school under Master Henderson for the London County Council (LCC) and were offered employment in London.  Patrick went out first and John went when he was about 16 – so this gives an idea of how early granda was writing his poetry.  John worked as a weights and measures inspector in London.

Impressions of the youthful mind
Are marked so clear and deep,
Time often strives in vain their print
From memory to sweep;
The home of childhood, childhood’s friends,
Its hopes, its loves, its ways,
The good we learn, the bad we learn,
Cling on through riper days.

Manhood with more impetuous love
May cursed be or blest;
Yet are youth’s friends wound round the heart
By ties the tenderest;
Then ‘tis not strange that you, my friend –
Youth’s comrade first and best –
Are printed deep still in my mind,
And shrined within my breast.

Together oft we ran to school,
Together wrote and read,
Together hied we home again,
And slumbered head by head;
Together tackled problems hard,
And helped each other out,
Together strove for rivalry
In learning’s battle stout.

But Fate that doomed the Gael to roam,
Our parting did decree;
It steered your bark far o’er the foam,
Away across the sea.
And now within the city’s din,
With buildings all around,
No azure skies to feast your eyes,
No verdure on the ground.

I know you yearn old scenes to view,
To feel the mountain breeze,
And hear the happy wild birds’ songs,
And wind among the trees;
I know you often waft your thoughts
Back over land and sea,
On hill and plain to live again
The youth you lived with me.

And often, too, youth’s comrade dear,
Though billows us divide,
I dream we both are school boys here,
And wander side by side.
And read our school books o’er again
In that same school of yore;
And play upon the grassy plain,
Where oft we played before

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

This poem was written for Patrick (Patrick Dan – P.D.) who was a year older than granda whereas John was a few years younger.
This newspaper print has a ‘clubites’ number (57856) H. M.  It is possibly from ‘The Freeman’s Journal’ – a weekly column written by Rose Kavanagh under the name of ‘Uncle Remus’.  Rose herself was a poet born in Kilnadroy, Beragh, lived at Knockmanny and is buried at Forth Chapel.  She died in 1903 we think.  The Freeman’s Journal was an all Ireland nationalist/republican newspaper possibly printed in Dublin.  (His poem ‘Rose Kavanagh’ is on page 134 of ‘Kevin’s Poems – Typed in England’)

(To his brother John B who went to London)

How short seems our youth when we’ve left it behind,
That seemed long while it yet was before us!
How little we cherished youth’s innocent joys,
Till youth and its joys had gone o’er us
Och! do you remember that time when our hearts
Were light as the down o’ the thistle –
When together we’d stray, an’ together we’d play,
An’ study an’ labour, an’ whistle?

An’ och! do you mind the dark nights that we tramped
To the band room, when learnin’ the flutin’?
How I on flute kep puffin’ away
An’ you on the piccolo tootin’!
An’ John, with what vigour we’d rush at our work,
Resolved to get through with our labours –
The diggin’ o’ praties or mowin o’ corn –
As soon as the rest of our neighbours!

Aroon, do you mind how we worked at the turf
On the top of the mountain together?
The breezes so mild; an’ the curlews so wild,
Startin’ up from their nests in the heather;
An’ the little red lark singin’ far, far above;
The world with sunshine o’erflowin’;
The crowin’ o’ moorcocks an’ cacklin’ o’ hens –
Upon the high hills o’ Tir Eoghain!

But since to the Sassenach land you have gone,
‘Tis often I miss you in Eirinn –
In autumn, when harvestin’ is to be done,
In spring when the ground is preparin’
An’ certain I am you oft sigh for the calm
O’ the green fields an’ blossomin’ heather,
An’ often you long for the mountain larks song,
An’ the days that we rambled together.

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

(It is not too often Michael mentioned his brothers by name in his poems.  This was written to John when he followed his brother Patrick to London.  The ‘band’ was the Sixmilecross band)