The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore

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Beneath the touch of Hope, how soft,
How light the magic pencil ran!
Till Fear would come, alas, as oft,
And trembling close what Hope began.

A tear or two had dropt from Grief,
And Jealousy would, now and then,
Ruffle in haste some snow-white leaf,
Which Love had still to smooth again.

But, ah! there came a blooming boy,
Who often turned the pages o'er,
And wrote therein such words of joy,
That all who read them sighed for more.

And Pleasure was this spirit's name,
And though so soft his voice and look,
Yet Innocence, whene'er he came,
Would tremble for her spotless book.

For, oft a Bacchant cup he bore,
With earth's sweet nectar sparkling bright;
And much she feared lest, mantling o'er,
Some drops should on the pages light.

And so it chanced, one luckless night,
The urchin let that goblet fall
O'er the fair book, so pure, so white,
And sullied lines and marge and all!

In vain now, touched with shame, he tried
To wash those fatal stains away;
Deep, deep had sunk the sullying tide,
The leaves grew darker everyday.

And Fancy's sketches lost their hue,
And Hope's sweet lines were all effaced,
And Love himself now scarcely knew
What Love himself so lately traced.

At length the urchin Pleasure fled,
(For how, alas! could Pleasure stay?)
And Love, while many a tear he shed,
Reluctant flung the book away.

The index now alone remains.
Of all the pages spoiled by Pleasure,
And though it bears some earthly stains,
Yet Memory counts the leaf a treasure.

And oft, they say, she scans it o'er,
And oft, by this memorial aided,
Brings back the pages now no more,
And thinks of lines that long have faded.

I know not if this tale be true,
But thus the simple facts are stated;
And I refer their truth to you,
Since Love and you are near related.

TO CARA,

AFTER AN INTERVAL OF ABSENCE.

Concealed within the shady wood
A mother left her sleeping child,
And flew, to cull her rustic food,
The fruitage of the forest wild.

But storms upon her pathway rise,
The mother roams, astray and weeping;
Far from the weak appealing cries
Of him she left so sweetly sleeping.

She hopes, she fears; a light is seen,
And gentler blows the night wind's breath;
Yet no--'tis gone--the storms are keen,
The infant may be chilled to death!

Perhaps, even now, in darkness shrouded,
His little eyes lie cold and still;--
And yet, perhaps, they are not clouded,
Life and love may light them still.

Thus, Cara, at our last farewell,
When, fearful even thy hand to touch,
I mutely asked those eyes to tell
If parting pained thee half so much:

I thought,--and, oh! forgive the thought,
For none was e'er by love inspired
Whom fancy had not also taught
To hope the bliss his soul desired.

Yes, I _did_ think, in Cara's mind,
Though yet to that sweet mind unknown,
I left one infant wish behind,
One feeling, which I called my own.

Oh blest! though but in fancy blest,
How did I ask of Pity's care,
To shield and strengthen, in thy breast,
The nursling I had cradled there.

And, many an hour, beguiled by pleasure,
And many an hour of sorrow numbering,
I ne'er forgot the new-born treasure,
I left within thy bosom slumbering.

Perhaps, indifference has not chilled it,
Haply, it yet a throb may give--
Yet, no--perhaps, a doubt has killed it;
Say, dearest--_does_ the feeling live?

TO CARA,

ON THE DAWNING OF A NEW YEAR'S DAY.

When midnight came to close the year,
We sighed to think it thus should take
The hours it gave us--hours as dear
As sympathy and love could make
Their blessed moments,--every sun
Saw us, my love, more closely one.

But, Cara, when the dawn was nigh
Which came a new year's light to shed,
That smile we caught from eye to eye
Told us, those moments were not fled:
Oh, no,--we felt, some future sun
Should see us still more closely one.

Thus may we ever, side by side,
From happy years to happier glide;
And still thus may the passing sigh
We give to hours, that vanish o'er us,
Be followed by the smiling eye,
That Hope shall shed on scenes before us!

TO ......., 1801.

To be the theme of every hour
The heart devotes to Fancy's power,
When her prompt magic fills the mind
With friends and joys we've left behind,
And joys return and friends are near,
And all are welcomed with a tear:--
In the mind's purest seat to dwell,
To be remembered oft and well
By one whose heart, though vain and wild,
By passion led, by youth beguiled,
Can proudly still aspire to be
All that may yet win smiles from thee:--
If thus to live in every part
Of a lone, weary wanderer's heart;
If thus to be its sole employ
Can give thee one faint gleam of joy,
Believe it. Mary,--oh! believe
A tongue that never can deceive,
Though, erring, it too oft betray
Even more than Love should dare to say,--
In Pleasure's dream or Sorrow's hour,
In crowded hall or lonely bower,
The business of my life shall be,
For ever to remember thee.
And though that heart be dead to mine,
Since Love is life and wakes not thine,
I'll take thy image, as the form
Of one whom Love had failed to warm,
Which, though it yield no answering thrill,
Is not less dear, is worshipt still--
I'll take it, wheresoe'er I stray,
The bright, cold burden of my way.
To keep this semblance fresh in bloom,
My heart shall be its lasting tomb,
And Memory, with embalming care,
Shall keep it fresh and fadeless there.

THE GENIUS OF HARMONY.

AN IRREGULAR ODE.

_Ad harmoniam canere mundum_.
CICERO _"de Nat. Deor." lib. iii_.

There lies a shell beneath the waves,
In many a hollow winding wreathed,
Such as of old
Echoed the breath that warbling sea-maids breathed;
This magic shell,
From the white bosom of a syren fell,
As once she wandered by the tide that laves
Sicilia's sands of gold.
It bears
Upon its shining side the mystic notes
Of those entrancing airs,[1]
The genii of the deep were wont to swell,
When heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music rolled!
Oh! seek it, wheresoe'er it floats;
And, if the power
Of thrilling numbers to thy soul be dear,

Go, bring the bright shell to my bower,
And I will fold thee in such downy dreams
As lap the Spirit of the Seventh Sphere,
When Luna's distant tone falls faintly on his ear![2]
And thou shalt own,
That, through the circle of creation's zone,
Where matter slumbers or where spirit beams;
From the pellucid tides,[3] that whirl
The planets through their maze of song,
To the small rill, that weeps along
Murmuring o'er beds of pearl;
From the rich sigh
Of the sun's arrow through an evening sky,[4]
To the faint breath the tuneful osier yields
On Afric's burning fields;[5]
Thou'lt wondering own this universe divine
Is mine!
That I respire in all and all in me,
One mighty mingled soul of boundless harmony.

Welcome, welcome, mystic shell!
Many a star has ceased to burn,[6]
Many a tear has Saturn's urn
O'er the cold bosom of the ocean wept,
Since thy aerial spell
Hath in the waters slept.
Now blest I'll fly
With the bright treasure to my choral sky,
Where she, who waked its early swell,
The Syren of the heavenly choir.
Walks o'er the great string of my Orphic Lyre;
Or guides around the burning pole
The winged chariot of some blissful soul:
While thou--
Oh son of earth, what dreams shall rise for thee!
Beneath Hispania's sun,
Thou'll see a streamlet run,
Which I've imbued with breathing melody;[7]
And there, when night-winds down the current die,
Thou'lt hear how like a harp its waters sigh:
A liquid chord is every wave that flows,
An airy plectrum every breeze that blows.

There, by that wondrous stream,
Go, lay thy languid brow,
And I will send thee such a godlike dream,
As never blest the slumbers even of him,[8]
Who, many a night, with his primordial lyre,
Sate on the chill Pangaean mount,[9]
And, looking to the orient dim,
Watched the first flowing of that sacred fount,
From which his soul had drunk its fire.
Oh think what visions, in that lonely hour,
Stole o'er his musing breast;
What pious ecstasy
Wafted his prayer to that eternal Power,
Whose seal upon this new-born world imprest
The various forms of bright divinity!
Or, dost thou know what dreams I wove,
Mid the deep horror of that silent bower,[10]
Where the rapt Samian slept his holy slumber?
When, free
From every earthly chain,
From wreaths of pleasure and from bonds of pain,
His spirit flew through fields above,
Drank at the source of nature's fontal number,
And saw, in mystic choir, around him move
The stars of song, Heaven's burning minstrelsy!
Such dreams, so heavenly bright,
I swear
By the great diadem that twines my hair,
And by the seven gems that sparkle there,
Mingling their beams
In a soft iris of harmonious light,
Oh, mortal! such shall be thy radiant dreams.

* * * * *

I found her not--the chamber seemed
Like some divinely haunted place
Where fairy forms had lately beamed,
And left behind their odorous trace!

It felt as if her lips had shed
A sigh around her, ere she fled,
Which hung, as on a melting lute,
When all the silver chords are mute,
There lingers still a trembling breath
After the note's luxurious death,
A shade of song, a spirit air
Of melodies which had been there.

I saw the veil, which, all the day,
Had floated o'er her cheek of rose;
I saw the couch, where late she lay
In languor of divine repose;
And I could trace the hallowed print
Her limbs had left, as pure and warm,
As if 'twere done in rapture's mint,
And Love himself had stamped the form.

Oh my sweet mistress, where wert thou?
In pity fly not thus from me;
Thou art my life, my essence now,
And my soul dies of wanting thee.

[1] In the "Histoire Naturelle des Antilles," there is an account of some
curious shells, found at Curacoa, on the back of which were lines, filled
with musical characters so distinct and perfect, that the writer assures
us a very charming trio was sung from one of them. The author adds, a poet
might imagine that these shells were used by the syrens at their concerts.

[2] According to Cicero, and his commentator, Macrobius, the lunar tone is
the gravest and faintest on the planetary heptachord.

[3] Leucippus, the atomist, imagined a kind of vortices in the heavens,
which he borrowed from Anaxagoras, and possibly suggested to Descartes.

[4] Heraclides, upon the allegories of Homer, conjectures that the idea of
the harmony of the spheres originated with this poet, who, in representing
the solar beams as arrows, supposes them to emit a peculiar sound in the
air.

[5] In the account of Africa which D'Ablancourt has translated, there is
mention of a tree in that country, whose branches, when shaken by the hand
produce very sweet sounds.

[6] Alluding to the extinction, or at least the disappearance, of some of
those fixed stars, which we are taught to consider as suns, attended each
by its system. Descartes thought that our earth might formerly have been a
sun, which became obscured by a thick incrustation over its surface. This
probably suggested the idea of a central fire.

[7] This musical river is mentioned in the romance of Achilles Tatius.

[8] Orpheus.

[9] Eratosthenes, in mentioning the extreme veneration of Orpheus for
Apollo, says that he was accustomed to go to the Pangaean mountain at
daybreak, and there wait the rising of the sun, that he might be the first
to hail its beams.

[10] Alluding to the cave near Samos, where Pythagoras devoted the greater
part of his days and nights to meditation and the mysteries of his
philosophy.

TO MRS. HENRY TIGHE,

ON READING HER "PSYCHE."

Tell me the witching tale again,
For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
So pure to feel, so sweet to hear.

Say, Love, in all thy prime of fame,
When the high heaven itself was thine;
When piety confest the flame,
And even thy errors were divine;

Did ever Muse's hand, so fair,
A glory round thy temple spread?
Did ever lip's ambrosial air
Such fragrance o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre
The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed;--
But all _her_ sighs were sighs of fire,
The myrtle withered as she breathed.

Oh! you that love's celestial dream,
In all its purity, would know,
Let not the senses' ardent beam
Too strongly through the vision glow.

Love safest lies, concealed in night,
The night where heaven has bid him lie;
Oh! shed not there unhallowed light,
Or, Psyche knows, the boy will fly.

Sweet Psyche, many a charmed hour,
Through many a wild and magic waste,
To the fair fount and blissful bower
Have I, in dreams, thy light foot traced!

Where'er thy joys are numbered now,
Beneath whatever shades of rest,
The Genius of the starry brow
Hath bound thee to thy Cupid's breast;

Whether above the horizon dim,
Along whose verge our spirits stray,--
Half sunk beneath the shadowy rim,
Half brightened by the upper ray,[1]--

Thou dwellest in a world, all light,
Or, lingering here, doth love to be,
To other souls, the guardian bright
That Love was, through this gloom, to thee;

Still be the song to Psyche dear,
The song, whose gentle voice was given
To be, on earth, to mortal ear,
An echo of her own, in heaven.

[1] By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the soul
between sensible and intellectual existence.

FROM THE HIGH PRIEST OF APOLLO TO A VIRGIN OF DELPHI.[1]

_Cum digno digna_.....
SULPICIA.

"Who is the maid, with golden hair,
"With eye of fire, and foot of air,
"Whose harp around my altar swells,
"The sweetest of a thousand shells?"
'Twas thus the deity, who treads
The arch of heaven, and proudly sheds
Day from his eyelids--thus he spoke,
As through my cell his glories broke.

Aphelia is the Delphic fair[2]
With eyes of fire and golden hair,
Aphelia's are the airy feet.
And hers the harp divinely sweet;
For foot so light has never trod
The laurelled caverns of the god.
Nor harp so soft hath ever given
A sigh to earth or hymn to heaven.

"Then tell the virgin to unfold,
"In looser pomp, her locks of gold,
"And bid those eyes more fondly shine
"To welcome down a Spouse Divine;
"Since He, who lights the path of years--
"Even from the fount of morning's tears
"To where his setting splendors burn
"Upon the western sea-maid's urn--
"Doth not, in all his course, behold
"Such eyes of fire, such hair of gold.
"Tell her, he comes, in blissful pride,
"His lip yet sparkling with the tide
"That mantles in Olympian bowls,--
"The nectar of eternal souls!
"For her, for her he quits the skies,
"And to her kiss from nectar flies.
"Oh, he would quit his star-throned height,
"And leave the world to pine for light,
"Might he but pass the hours of shade,
"Beside his peerless Delphic maid,
"She, more than earthly woman blest,
"He, more than god on woman's breast!"

There is a cave beneath the steep,[3]
Where living rills of crystal weep
O'er herbage of the loveliest hue
That ever spring begemmed with dew:
There oft the greensward's glossy tint
Is brightened by the recent print
Of many a faun and naiad's feet,--
Scarce touching earth, their step so fleet,--
That there, by moonlight's ray, had trod,
In light dance, o'er the verdant sod.
"There, there," the god, impassioned, said,
"Soon as the twilight tinge is fled,
"And the dim orb of lunar souls
"Along its shadowy pathway rolls--
"There shall we meet,--and not even He,
"The God who reigns immortally,
"Where Babel's turrets paint their pride
"Upon the Euphrates' shining tide,[4]--
"Not even when to his midnight loves
"In mystic majesty he moves,
"Lighted by many an odorous fire,
"And hymned by all Chaldaea's choir,--
"E'er yet, o'er mortal brow, let shine
"Such effluence of Love Divine,
"As shall to-night, blest maid, o'er thine."

Happy the maid, whom heaven allows
To break for heaven her virgin vows!
Happy the maid!--her robe of shame
Is whitened by a heavenly flame,
Whose glory, with a lingering trace,
Shines through and deifies her race!

[1] This poem, as well as a few others in the following volume, formed
part of a work which I had early projected, and even announced to the
public, but which, luckily, perhaps, for myself, had been interrupted by
my visit to America in the year 1803.

[2] In the 9th Pythic of Pindar, where Apollo, in the same manner,
requires of Chiron some information respecting the fair Cyrene, the
Centaur, in obeying, very gravely apologizes for telling the God what his
omniscience must know so perfectly already.

[3] The Corycian Cave, which Pausanias mentions. The inhabitants of
Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were children of the
river Plistus.

[4] The temple of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon; in one of whose towers there
was a large chapel set apart for these celestial assignations. "No man is
allowed to sleep here," says Herodotus; "but the apartment is appropriated
to a female, whom, if we believe the Chaldaean priests, the deity selects
from the women of the country, as his favorite."

FRAGMENT.

Pity me, love! I'll pity thee,
If thou indeed hast felt like me.
All, all my bosom's peace is o'er!
At night, which _was_ my hour of calm,
When from the page of classic lore,
From the pure fount of ancient lay
My soul has drawn the placid balm,
Which charmed its every grief away,
Ah! there I find that balm no more.
Those spells, which make us oft forget
The fleeting troubles of the day,
In deeper sorrows only whet
The stings they cannot tear away.
When to my pillow racked I fly,
With weary sense and wakeful eye.
While my brain maddens, where, oh, where
Is that serene consoling prayer,
Which once has harbingered my rest,
When the still soothing voice of Heaven
Hath seemed to whisper in my breast,
"Sleep on, thy errors are forgiven!"
No, though I still in semblance pray,
My thoughts are wandering far away,
And even the name of Deity
Is murmured out in sighs for thee.

A NIGHT THOUGHT.

How oft a cloud, with envious veil,
Obscures yon bashful light,
Which seems so modestly to steal
Along the waste of night!

'Tis thus the world's obtrusive wrongs
Obscure with malice keen
Some timid heart, which only longs
To live and die unseen.

THE KISS.

Grow to my lip, thou sacred kiss,
On which my soul's beloved swore
That there should come a time of bliss,
When she would mock my hopes no more.
And fancy shall thy glow renew,
In sighs at morn, and dreams at night,
And none shall steal thy holy dew
Till thou'rt absolved by rapture's rite.
Sweet hours that are to make me blest,
Fly, swift as breezes, to the goal,
And let my love, my more than soul,
Come blushing to this ardent breast.
Then, while in every glance I drink
The rich overflowing of her mind,
Oh! let her all enamored sink
In sweet abandonment resigned,
Blushing for all our struggles past,
And murmuring, "I am thine at last!"

SONG.

Think on that look whose melting ray
For one sweet moment mixt with mine,
And for that moment seemed to say,
"I dare not, or I would be thine!"

Think on thy every smile and glance,
On all thou hast to charm and move;
And then forgive my bosom's trance,
Nor tell me it is sin to love.

Oh, _not_ to love thee were the sin;
For sure, if Fate's decrees be done,
Thou, thou art destined still to win,
As I am destined to be won!

THE CATALOGUE.

"Come, tell me," says Rosa, as kissing and kist,
One day she reclined on my breast;
"Come, tell me the number, repeat me the list
"Of the nymphs you have loved and carest."--
Oh Rosa! 'twas only my fancy that roved,
My heart at the moment was free;
But I'll tell thee, my girl, how many I've loved,
And the number shall finish with thee.

My tutor was Kitty; in infancy wild
She taught me the way to be blest;
She taught me to love her, I loved like a child,
But Kitty could fancy the rest.
This lesson of dear and enrapturing lore
I have never forgot, I allow:
I have had it _by rote_ very often before,
But never _by heart_ until now.

Pretty Martha was next, and my soul was all flame,
But my head was so full of romance
That I fancied her into some chivalry dame,
And I was her knight of the lance.
But Martha was not of this fanciful school,
And she laughed at her poor little knight;
While I thought her a goddess, she thought me a fool,
And I'll swear _she_ was most in the right.

My soul was now calm, till, by Cloris's looks,
Again I was tempted to rove;
But Cloris, I found, was so learned in books
That she gave me more logic than love.
So I left this young Sappho, and hastened to fly
To those sweeter logicians in bliss,
Who argue the point with a soul-telling eye,
And convince us at once with a kiss.

Oh! Susan was then all the world unto me,
But Susan was piously given;
And the worst of it was, we could never agree
On the road that was shortest to Heaven.
"Oh, Susan!" I've said, in the moments of mirth,
"What's devotion to thee or to me?
"I devoutly believe there's a heaven on earth,
"And believe that that heaven's in _thee_!"

IMITATION OF CATULLUS.

TO HIMSELF.

_Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire_, etc.

Cease the sighing fool to play;
Cease to trifle life away;
Nor vainly think those joys thine own,
Which all, alas, have falsely flown.
What hours, Catullus, once were thine.
How fairly seemed thy day to shine,
When lightly thou didst fly to meet
The girl whose smile was then so sweet--
The girl thou lovedst with fonder pain
Than e'er thy heart can feel again.

Ye met--your souls seemed all in one,
Like tapers that commingling shone;
Thy heart was warm enough for both,
And hers, in truth, was nothing loath.

Such were the hours that once were thine;
But, ah! those hours no longer shine.
For now the nymph delights no more
In what she loved so much before;
And all Catullus now can do,
Is to be proud and frigid too;

Nor follow where the wanton flies,
Nor sue the bliss that she denies.
False maid! he bids farewell to thee,
To love, and all love's misery;
The heyday of his heart is o'er,
Nor will he court one favor more.

Fly, perjured girl!--but whither fly?
Who now will praise thy cheek and eye?
Who now will drink the syren tone,
Which tells him thou art all his own?
Oh, none:--and he who loved before
Can never, never love thee more.

* * * * *

_"Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more_!"
--ST. JOHN, chap. viii.

Oh woman, if through sinful wile
Thy soul hath strayed from honor's track,
'Tis mercy only can beguile,
By gentle ways, the wanderer back.

The stain that on thy virtue lies,
Washed by those tears, not long will stay;
As clouds that sully morning skies
May all be wept in showers away.

Go, go, be innocent,--and live;
The tongues of men may wound thee sore;
But Heaven in pity can forgive,
And bids thee "go, and sin no more!"

NONSENSE.

Good reader! if you e'er have seen,
When Phoebus hastens to his pillow,
The mermaids, with their tresses green,
Dancing upon the western billow:
If you have seen, at twilight dim,
When the lone spirit's vesper hymn
Floats wild along the winding shore,
If you have seen, through mist of eve,
The fairy train their ringlets weave,
Glancing along the spangled green:--
If you have seen all this, and more,
God bless me, what a deal you've seen!

EPIGRAM.

FROM THE FRENCH.

"I never gave a kiss (says Prue),
"To naughty man, for I abhor it."
She will not _give_ a kiss, 'tis true;
She'll _take_ one though, and thank you for it.

ON A SQUINTING POETESS.

To no _one_ Muse does she her glance confine,
But has an eye, at once, to _all the Nine_!

TO .... ....

_Maria pur quando vuol, non e bisogna mutar ni faccia ni voce per
esser un Angelo_.[1]

Die when you will, you need not wear
At Heaven's Court a form more fair
Than Beauty here on earth has given;
Keep but the lovely looks we see--
The voice we hear--and you will be
An angel ready-made for Heaven!

[1] The words addressed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury to the beautiful Nun
at Murano.--_See his Life_.

TO ROSA.

_A far conserva, e cumulo d'amanti.
"Past. Fid_."

And are you then a thing of art,
Seducing all, and loving none;
And have I strove to gain a heart
Which every coxcomb thinks his own?

Tell me at once if this be true,
And I will calm my jealous breast;
Will learn to join the dangling crew,
And share your simpers with the rest.

But if your heart be _not_ so free,--
Oh! if another share that heart,
Tell not the hateful tale to me,
But mingle mercy with your art.

I'd rather think you "false as hell,"
Than find you to be all divine,--
Than know that heart could love so well,
Yet know that heart would not be mine!

TO PHILLIS.

Phillis, you little rosy rake,
That heart of yours I long to rifle;
Come, give it me, and do not make
So much ado about a _trifle_!