The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1897-10-02
WAS A FINE MUSICIAN AND SINGER.
AND DICKENS ADMIR-.
ED HIS MELODIES.
POPULARITY WITH CONTEMPORARIES.
HIS BRILLIANT INTELLECT FADED
NEAR LlFE'S CLOSE.

There is supreme quality which I
think must be conceded to Thomas
Moore-and it is one in which Ireland
| can claim great share-that, namely,
| OF being almost the only real lyric poet
| of this century, says Martin McDer-
mott in the Dublin Nation. For what is
| a lyric poet? Is he not poet who
combines within himself the gifts, 50
! rarely found together now, but which
| were common in the early Irish days.
| of poet, musician and singer all in one?
Even to find an English poet who was
also musician We have to go back to
| the times Of John Milton. Moore says
himself that of all the poets he had met
or known, the Rev. Mr.. Bowles was
the only one who was musician as
| we'll; but, 1 am afraid, the Rev. Mr..
Bowles, in the present day, hardly
counts. OF Moore's contemporaries and
co-equals, Scott had not a note of music
in him, Bryon could but just follow
T! simple air, and 1t is doubtful whether
| Wordsworth could do even that Moore
! appears to think that Burns possessed
true musical faculty, but that it was
J. undeveloped. With Moore, on the con-
trary, it was the one natural endow-
ment which underlay, dominated, all
others-the one which his Muse obeyed
as willingly as Ariel obeyed Prospero.
! He would hang over one Of these de-
liclous tunes of our Celtic time until
he had found the true word for every
note of it, the true feeling for every
phrase. And it was in this way-by
following all the modulations and un-
, dulations and windings of the sound
every turn of the feeling-that he was
enabled to enrich his verse, for in
stance, with so many new metrical COM
binations, and pauses, and cadences,
hitherto unknown to English prosody.
1t is true Waller and Wither, Herrick,
Lovelace, and Matt Prior have gone to
the making of Moore's verses; but there
is always an added grace, a tender caes.
ura, or quick turn, a laugh or sigh
| that comes to it out Of the music The
music is always present in the verse.
There are some of Moore's songs, like
Loves Young Dream" mora Creena," !"
and THE Minstrel Boy,'-where the
words seem actually to melt into the
music; SO that once heard together, they
remain ever after indissoluble. There
is no other poet who has written in Eng
lish of whom the same can be said
Hood might perhaps have written verses
as tender and as bright, had the heav-
ems been kind to him; but Hood did
/ not combine music with his poetry, and
this makes all the difference. A song
without an air is like a bird without
it's wings.
| There seems to be notion abroad
that Moore's popularity as lyric poet,
as writer of songs that are sung, is
ON the wane; that he is out-of-date,
s,perannuated. venture to doubt It.
Songs come and co. but Moore's "Melo-
dies" remain. And until our critics can
produce a galaxy of song as perfect in
thought. in expression, and in music,
as "The Last Rose of Summer" loft in
the Silly Night" "The Young May
Moon," and fifty others ] could name,
they may rest assured that, however
they may offer new lamps for old, we.
who know and feel the magic that re-
sides in the old ones, will be slow To
ments. OF course, the new are more in
evidence. The dead occupy less space
than the living; it is the law of nature.
But when such fixed stars as Moore =
the armament of song, they can only be
eclipsed by other stars of greater mag
nitude. And one thing / make bold to
say; such luminarics have not yet arisen
above our horizon.
1t is curious to think that the gentle
art Of song writing which Moore says he
found in such bad way when he began,
Immediately sank again to the same
dead level after he had ceased. Haynes
Bayley and the poet Bum were the
SUCCESSORS of Thomas Moore. Occa-
sionally the latter stole some bright
fragments of Moore's verse, attached tt
it his own incongrous nonsense, in the
midst of which it sparkled like the gem
on the dunghill of the fable. Thus
from Moore's noble verse;
"Oft in the Silly night,
Ere slumber's chain hath bound me
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me-
Bum pilfered the beautiful expression
''The light of other days." tackled or
to it some nonsense verses of his owl
manufacture, got Balfe 10 compose ar
air for it, and in this form the thin
might have been heard at ever so many