’TIS the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are 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 scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
Irish
poet, friend of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Moore's writings
range from lyric to satire, from prose romance to history and biography.
His popular IRISH MELODIES appeared in ten parts between 1807 and 1835.
Thomas
Moore was born in Dublin as the son of a grocer. His background was poor
and he never varnished it. In his poem 'Epitaph on a Tuft-Hunter' he
mocked snobbery:
"Heaven
grant him now some noble nook
For, rest his soul!
he'd rather be
Genteelly damn'd beside a Duke,
Than sav'd in vulgar company."
