Go sleep, with the Sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers,
Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine.
“If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover
Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone;
I was but as the wind, passing heedlessly over,
And all the wild sweetness I wak’d was thy own.”
This is better than dynamite to stir Ireland’s best pulses, even now.
Lalla Rookh.
Mr. Moore had his little country vacations—among them, that notable stay up in the lovely county of Derbyshire, near to Ashbourne and Dovedale, and the old fishing grounds of Walton and of Cotton—where he wrote the larger part of his first considerable poem, Lalla Rookh—which had amazing success, and brought to its author the sum of £3,000. But I do not think that what inspiration is in it came to him from the hollows or the heights of Derbyshire; I should rather trace its pretty Oriental confusion of sound and scenes to the jingle of London chandeliers. Yet the web, the gossamer, the veils and the flying feet do not seem to touch ground anywhere in England, but shift and change and grow out of his Eastern readings and dreams.
Moore married at thirty-two—after he was known for the Irish melodies, but before the publication of Lalla Rookh; and in his Letters and Diary (if you read them—though they make an enormous mass to read, and frighten most people away by their bulk), you will come upon very frequent, and very tender mention of “Dear Bessie”—the wife. It is true, there were rumors that he wofully neglected her, but hardly well founded. Doubtless there was many a day and many a week when she was guarding the cottage and the children at Sloperton; and he bowing and pirouetting his way amongst the trailing robes of their ladyships who loved music and literature in London; but how should he refuse the invitations of his Lordship this or that? Or how should she—who has no robes that will stand alone—bring her pretty home gowns into that blazon of the salons? Always, too (if his letters may be trusted), he is eager to make his escape between whiles—wearied of this tintamarre—and to rush away to his cottage at Sloperton[52] for a little slippered ease, and a romp with the children. Poor children—they all drop away, one by one—two only reaching maturity—then dying. The pathetic stories of the sickening, the danger and the hush, come poignantly into his Diary, and it does seem that the winning clatter of the world gets a hold upon his wrenched heart over-quickly again. But what right have you or I to judge in such matters?