In The Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue, edited by Messrs. Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rolliston, Thomas Moore is represented by eleven pieces, to wit, “The Song of Fionnuola,” “The Irish Peasant to his Mistress,” “At the Mid Hour of Night,” “When He who Adores Thee,” “After the Battle,” “The Light of Other Days,” “On Music,” “Echo,” “As Slow our Ship,” “No, not more Welcome,” and “My Birthday.” I do not suppose for a moment that the editors intended to suggest that this selection represents in any sense the more popular of Moore’s writings from the Irish point of view. Only two of the lyrics, indeed, namely, “The Light of Other[106] Days” and “As Slow our Ship,” are really well known among lovers of poetry, even in Ireland. We assume, therefore, that the remaining sets of verses have been inserted because, in the opinion of Mr. Stopford A. Brooke and his co-editor, they are the best of Moore, qua poet in the English tongue. We quote here at length “The Song of Fionnuola”:
“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water;
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,
While, murmuring mournfully, Lir’s lonely daughter
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes.
When shall the swan, her death-note singing,
Sleep, with wings in darkness furl’d?
When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,
Call my spirit from this stormy world?
Sadly, O Moyle, to thy winter-wave weeping,
Fate bids me languish long ages away;
Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping,
Still doth the pure light its dawning delay.
When will that day-star, mildly springing,
Warm our isle with peace and love?
When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,
Call my spirit to the fields above?”

[107]

As the devil might inquire—Is this poetry? I believe that I shall have with me the sounder critics when I say that it is small sentiment very carelessly set down. In sixteen lines we have quite a number of different measures, and Moore would seem to have labored under the impression that he was writing in one. In other words, the verses halt. As to the sentiment, nobody can question its utter banality. What a critic of Mr. Stopford Brooke’s caliber can see in it, Heaven alone knows. He might have got better verses and better sentiment out of any average breach of promise case. Nor are the remaining pieces much above the standard required by those eminent judges of poetry, the gentlemen who write morceaux for the drawing-room. For myself I venture the opinion that Moore lives on the strength of “Rich and Rare were the Gems she Wore,” “The Meeting of the Waters,” “The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls,” “Believe Me if all Those Endearing Young Charms,”[108] “The Minstrel Boy,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” and the “Canadian Boat Song,” most of which efforts have been set to music, and are thereby materially aided to survival. So that on the whole Thomas Moore may not be reckoned as in any sense a purveyor of the higher kinds of poetry. It is creditable, however, to the Irish people that they should have produced and put their emotional and moral trust in a Moore, rather than a Burns. But morals on one side, Burns is immeasurably the greater poet, even though at times he wrote drivel of the feeblest sort. All the same it must be confessed that the general consent which keeps Moore at the head of the Irish poets is sufficiently grounded. For weak vessel though he may be, we do not find another Irish poet in the English tongue who could properly be placed above him. Right down to and including William Allingham, the history of Irish poetry in the English tongue has been the history of happy-go-lucky mediocrity. Even[109] Mangan, who has latterly been credited with a share of the authentic fire, exhibits a facility, a slipshodness and an aptness to the banal which savor of the librettist. From his most considerable production we take the following stanzas:

THE NAMELESS ONE
Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river
That sweeps along to the mighty sea;
God will inspire me while I deliver
My soul to thee!
Tell thou the world, when bones lie whitening
Amid the last homes of youth and eld,
That there once was one whose veins ran lightning
No eye beheld.
Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour,
How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,
No star of all heaven sends to light our
Path to the tomb.
Roll on, my song, and to after-ages
Tell how, disdaining all earth can give,
He would have taught men from wisdom’s pages
The way to live.
[110]
And tell how trampled, derided, hated,
And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,
He fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song—
With song which alway, sublime or rapid,
Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid—
A mountain stream.
Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years long
To herd with demons from hell beneath,
Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long
For even death.
Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,
Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,
With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted,
He still, still strove.

There may be lyrical impulse here, but it is of quite an ordinary quality. The much vaunted line about “veins that ran lightning,” could, I think, be paralleled out of previous poets, and the first half of it is clumsy and cacophonous. “Night-hour” and “light our” might have steppe............