Moore's Irish Melodies
a collection of songs and lyrics, is the volume upon which his reputation rests. He had engaged with a publisher in 1807 to write these songs and produced them at intervals during the next twenty-five years. They are pleasing and graceful, not lacking in pathos and sweetness. Many of them have been set to music and mean much more when sung than they can ever mean in the reading. There is scarcely an English-speaking person who has not a favorite among them. "'Tis the last rose of summer," "Oft in the stilly night," "The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed," "Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish," "Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!" "Those evening bells," are among the well known songs which will make Moore's name remembered.
Go where glory waits thee!
This world is all a fleeting show.
But the trail of the serpent is over them all.
But there's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream.
Whose wit in the combat as gentle as bright
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.
You may break, you may shatter, the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
Joy, joy forever! my task is done,
The gates are passed, and Heaven is won!
SAID OF MOORE.
Rarely has there been such an artist of harmony.--Welsh.
Happiness of nature and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bard of Erin.--Hazlitt.
Burns and Moore stand side by side as the lyrists of two kindred nations. But the works of the latter, polished and surpassingly sweet as they are, have something of the drawing-room sheen about them, which does not find its way to the heart so readily as the simple grace of the unconventional Ayrshire peasant.--Collier.
Despite his popularity during his lifetime, Moore can hardly be placed in the rank of great poets. His muse is a spangled dancing girl--light, airy, graceful, but nothing more.--Chambers.