• Michael Mullins
  • Michael "The Bard" Mullin
  • "The Bard of Foremass"
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    Poems
    The rushing gale

    I love to listen to the rushing gale –
    A giant wild rejoiced to be at large –
    Careering blindly over hill and vale,
    Striking obstructions in its headlong charge.

    It whistles through the keyholes of the doors,
    Rattles the windows, beats against the walls,
    Howls round the house, and in the chimney roars;
    “Delay me not”, impatiently it calls.

    With music grand and terrible are filled
    The forests when it strikes them in its rage.
    Trees sympathetic to the mood are thrilled
    By this blind Harper on his pilgrimage.

    But oh! its sweetest music, to my ears
    Is when it whistles through a whin topped fence:
    Its song is then a song of childhood’s years,
    Of childhood’s hopes, and childhood’s innocence.

    MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘THE BARD OF FOREMASS,
    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross. Co. Tyrone

    Weary winds asleep

    Down by the river zephyrs go to sleep,
    They fold tired wings among the poplars tall;
    The silent hills, with Venus, vigil keep;
    Solace, and peace, and rest at evenfall!

    These weary little winds have wandered far,
    But now, like birds beneath a mother’s wing,
    They flutter and lie still.  How peaceful are
    These poplars now! not one leaf quivering!

    And yet the poplars clashed a thousand shields,
    And waved a gallant farewell to the sun,
    Less than an hour ago; when o’er the fields
    He kissed good-night.  Then the winds sighed – “He’s gone,”

    Silence, and night, and slumber! the winds dream.
    No song of bird, no stir in bush or tree;
    Only the hush-song of the sleepless stream –
    A ship of silver on a golden sea.

    MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘THE BARD OF FOREMASS,
    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross. Co. Tyrone.

    Autumn Musings

    Oftimes I walk abroad,
    At Autumn morn and even,
    To view the works of God
    Who made the earth and heaven.
    And as I view
    The heavens blue
    Afar that stretches o’er me,
    And fields of grain
    On slope and plain
    Extending forth before me;
    I feel I should be meek
    Of heart, of spirit lowly;
    I see how man is weak,
    How God is great and holy.

    The leaves upon the trees,
    The Summer saw them blooming,
    But Autumn’s fading breeze
    Their freshness is consuming;
    Like fate unkind,
    That Autumn wind
    Flings them to earth and spurns them,
    From dust they came,
    And to the same
    Dame Nature now returns them;
    These leaves to me recall
    The fact – I should be humble;
    We came from dust, and all
    Of us to dust must crumble.

    MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘THE BARD OF FOREMASS,
    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross. Co. Tyrone.