May 28 The Harvard Classics, fifteen minutes a day
Master of Melodious Lyrics
Any one of these poems, “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” “The Light of Other Days,” would alone have made Moore immortal.
- Thomas Moore born May 28, 1779.
From the 1930 Reading Guide
Poems
Thomas Moore
Page 816 opens with the close of Byron’s “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-sixth Year”; the reading starts at “THOMAS MOORE.”
THOMAS MOORE
[1779–1852]
484 The Light of Other Days
OFT in the stilly nightEre slumber’s chain has bound me,Fond Memory brings the lightOf other days around me:The smiles, the tearsOf boyhood’s years,The words of love then spoken;The eyes that shone,Now dimm’d and gone,The cheerful hearts now broken!Thus in the stilly nightEre slumber’s chain has bound me,Sad Memory brings the lightOf other days around me.
When I remember allThe friends so link’d togetherI’ve seen around me fallLike leaves in wintry weather,I feel like oneWho treads aloneSome banquet-hall deserted,Whose lights are fledWhose garlands dead,And all but he departed!Thus in the stilly nightEre slumber’s chain has bound me,Sad Memory brings the lightOf other days around me.
485 Pro Patria Mori
WHEN he who adores thee has left but the nameOf his fault and his sorrows behind,O! say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fameOf a life that for thee was resign’d!Yes, weep, and however my foes may condemn,Thy tears shall efface their decree;For, Heaven can witness, though guilty to them,I have been but too faithful to thee.
With thee were the dreams of my earliest love;Every thought of my reason was thine:In my last humble prayer to the Spirit aboveThy name shall be mingled with mine!O! blest are the lovers and friends who shall liveThe days of thy glory to see;But the next dearest blessing that Heaven can giveIs the pride of thus dying for thee.
486 The Meeting of the Waters
THERE is not in the wide world a valley so sweetAs that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart,Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.
Yet it was not that nature had shed o’er the sceneHer purest of crystal and brightest of green;’Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill,Oh! no—it was something more exquisite still.’Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near,Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear,And who felt how the best charms of nature improve,When we see them reflected from looks that we love.
Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I restIn thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best,Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.
487 The Last Rose of Summer
’Tis the last rose of summerLeft blooming alone;All her lovely companionsAre faded and gone;No flower of her kindred,No rosebud is nigh,To reflect back her blushes,To give sigh for sigh.
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!To pine on the stem;Since the lovely are sleeping,Go, sleep thou with them.Thus kindly I scatterThy leaves o’er the bed,Where thy mates of the gardenLie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,When friendships decay,And from Love’s shining circleThe gems drop away.When true hearts lie witheredAnd fond ones are flown,Oh! who would inhabitThis bleak world alone?
488 The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls
THE harp that once through Tara’s hallsThe soul of music shed,Now hangs as mute on Tara’s wallsAs if that soul were fled.So sleeps the pride of former days,So glory’s thrill is o’er,And hearts, that once beat high for praise,Now feel that pulse no more.
No more to chiefs and ladies brightThe harp of Tara swells:The chord alone, that breaks at night,Its tale of ruin tells.Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,The only throb she gives,Is when some heart indignant breaks,To show that still she lives.
489 A Canadian Boat-Song
FAINTLY as tolls the evening chimeOur voices keep tune and our oars keep time.Soon as the woods on shore look dim,We’ll sing at St. Anne’s our parting hymn.Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past!
Why should we yet our sail unfurl?There is not a breath the blue wave to curl;But, when the wind blows off the shore,Oh! sweetly we’ll rest our weary oar.Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past!
Utawas’ tide! this trembling moonShall see us float over thy surges soon.Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,Oh, grant us cool heavens and favouring airs.Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past!
490 The Journey Onwards
As slow our ship her foamy trackAgainst the wind was cleaving,Her trembling pennant still look’d backTo that dear isle ’twas leaving.So loth we part from all we love,From all the links that bind us;So turn our hearts, as on we rove,To those we’ve left behind us!
When, round the bowl, of vanish’d yearsWe talk with joyous seeming—With smiles that might as well be tears,So faint, so sad their beaming;While memory brings us back againEach early tie that twined us,O, sweet’s the cup that circles thenTo those we’ve left behind us!
And when, in other climes, we meetSome isle or vale enchanting,Where all looks flowery, wild and sweet,And nought but love is wanting;We think how great had been our blissIf Heaven had but assign’d usTo live and die in scenes like this,With some we’ve left behind us!
As travellers oft look back at eveWhen eastward darkly going,To gaze upon that light they leaveStill faint behind them glowing,—So, when the close of pleasure’s dayTo gloom hath near consign’d us,We turn to catch one fading rayOf joy that’s left behind us.
491 The Young May Moon
THE young May moon is beaming, love,The glow-worm’s lamp is gleaming, love;How sweet to roveThrough Morna’s grove,When the drowsy world is dreaming, love!Then awake!—the heavens look bright, my dear,’Tis never too late for delight, my dear;And the best of all waysTo lengthen our daysIs to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!
Now all the world is sleeping, love,But the Sage, his star-watch keeping, love,And I, whose starMore glorious farIs the eye from that casement peeping, love.Then awake!—till rise of sun, my dear,The Sage’s glass we’ll shun, my dear,Or in watching the flightOf bodies of lightHe might happen to take thee for one, my dear!
492 Echo
How sweet the answer Echo makesTo Music at nightWhen, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,And far away o’er lawns and lakesGoes answering light!
Yet Love hath echoes truer farAnd far more sweetThan e’er, beneath the moonlight’s star,Of horn or lute or soft guitarThe songs repeat.
’Tis when the sigh,—in youth sincereAnd only then,The sigh that’s breathed for one to hear—Is by that one, that only dearBreathed back again.
493 At the Mid Hour of Night
AT the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I flyTo the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of airTo revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me thereAnd tell me our love is remember’d even in the sky!
Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hearWhen our voices, commingling, breathed like one on the ear;And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,I think, O my Love! ’tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of SoulsFaintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.
The reading ends with “At the Mid Hour of Night” on page 822; Charles Wolfe’s poem, which begins lower on that page, is left out.
Volume 41, pages 816–822 · See the scanned page on archive.org
This is the reading for May 28 in Fifteen Minutes a Day: The Reading Guide (1930 edition), page 52. There the assignment reads “Vol. 41, pp. 816–822.” Read it in the guide.