Poetry Sunday 24 May 2015

with Ira Maine, Poetry Editor.

An Argument.
A poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

I’ve oft been told by learned friars,
That wishing and the crime are one,
And Heaven punishes desires
As much as if the deed were done.

If wishing damns us, you and I
Are damn’d to all our heart’s content;
Come, then,at least we may enjoy
Some pleasure for our punishment !

END

Another disgraceful poem where an unprincipled attempt is made to persuade a lady from the path of righteousness!

Thomas Moore, born in Dublin in 1779 to a Gaelic speaking shopkeeper, and a mother whose maiden name was Codd, educated at Trinity College, Dublin (where the air was alive with the French Revolution) eventually studied law in London, but made his living by writing. He produced poems, plays and a biography of the Irish playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He was a great friend of Byron who entrusted his memoirs to Moore, to be published after his death. The memoirs were such that Moore was persuaded by Byron’s family to have them burnt. Scurrilous they most decidedly were, and their publication might very well have blighted many a reputation, but what an infamous loss to literature. Moore should have had less concern for 19th century respectability and much more concern for posterity.

Although born into a time of feverish revolution, and having dallied at college with Robert Emmet, Catholic Emancipation and the political movement known as the United Irishmen, Moore found his feet in England, lost his brogue, adopted an upper-class English accent and became becalmed in English respectability. The Irish uprising of 1798, where the French joined with the Irish in opposition to the British Empire and had their fleet destroyed by storms, seemed to pass Thomas Moore by.

Unlike Moore, and much later, Oscar Wilde did precisely the same with his brogue but, for some reason or other, never succeeded in achieving the same level of respectability. He did however, spend most of his Anglicized life being the scourge of the English nouveau riche, the new and highly respectable ‘middle class’, epitomized precisely in the black, bloated and bombazined figure of that demented old control freak, Queen Victoria.

Famously, Wilde described the English habit of ‘riding to hounds’ as;

The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’.

But back to Moore;

Probably, or at least inasmuch as I am aware, the only poem of Moore’s which touches on war or battle, skirmish or conflict is one called ‘The Minstrel Boy’.

You could, in a time before radios, when people provided their own ‘party pieces’ in the most respectable of households, you could hear any number of “Moore’s Melodies’ being sung, the slightly martial, romantically stirring “Minstrel Boy’ always to the fore.

The Minstrel Boy.

The Minstrel boy to the war has gone,
In the ranks of death you will find him.
His father’s sword he has girded on
And his wild harp slung behind him.
Land of Song said the warrior bard
Though all the world betrays thee,
One sword at least thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee,

The minstrel fell but the foeman’s chain
Could not drag that proud soul under.
The harp he loved ne’er spoke again
For he tore its chords asunder.
And said no chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery.
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery.

Shamelessly romantic stuff, and belonging more properly in Celtic myth and saga than amongst the blood and horror of trenches and revolution.

Moore’s songs and poems, vastly popular, were sung recited and danced to throughout the 19th century.

James Joyce, the author, knew Moore’s songs and poems well enough to include their mention in his novels, and to offer Moore’s ‘Last Rose Of Summer’ as his light tenor party piece.

Hector Berlioz, amongst many other 19th century composers, either put Moore’s work to music or included his tunes in his compositions.

Finally (when you had begun to think I was never going to stop) I’ll let Dublin have the last word on Thomas Moore.

As a kid at school in Dublin we were required to learn Moore’s ‘Meeting of the Waters’ by heart.  In the Vale of Avoca, about fifty kilometres south of Dublin, two rivers meet, the Avoca and the Avonmore.  Moore visited this beauty spot spot and wrote the above mentioned poem of which I will quote the first verse;

There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.
Oh, the last ray of feeling and life must depart
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

Dublin, despite Moore’s great success, held a very jaundiced view of a Dublin man who had become more English than the English themselves and one who seemed almost unaware of the poverty and privations they suffered at the hands of the Empire.

As a tribute to Moore, Anon appended an alternative two lines to those quoted;

There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet,
But if you had to walk with no shoes on your feet,
You wouldn’t give two fucks where the bright waters meet.