Moore was by nature disposed to gaiety and happiness, not to solitary conflict. He was created to occupy, in the manner of the ancient Irish bards, an honourable place at the table of the great, and while away their time with song. A sign of his being one of fortune's favourites is that he often jests even when he is most in earnest, unlike Byron, who, even when he jests, is serious, nay, gloomy. Moore plays with his theme and caresses it; Byron tears his to pieces, and turns from it in disgust. The two friends are constantly observing and reproducing nature; but under Byron's gaze the sun itself seems to be darkened, whilst Moore, with his love of rosy red and brightness and sparkle, himself creates "a morning sun which rises at noon."
Hence we get but a one-sided picture of Moore when we study him, as our plan has led us to do, chiefly as a political poet. He is also the writer of some of the best and most musical erotic lyrics in existence. The music of his verse is more exuberant than delicate; but there is magic in his handling of language. In his love poems a fascinating, glowing sensuousness and an ardent tenderness have found expression in word-melodies which are as tuneful as airs by Rossini. English admirers of Shelley, accustomed to more delicate, and, to the uninitiated, more perplexing harmonies, may, if they please, call these songs "over-sweet"; erotic verse cannot be too erotic; as the French say: "In love too much is not enough," Moore is no Mozart; but is this not almost like a Mozart air, like one of the hero's or Zerlina's in Don Juan?
"The young May-moon is beaming, love!
The glow-worm's lamp is gleaming, love!
How sweet to rove
Through Morna's grove,
While the drowsy world is dreaming, love!"
Songs by Rossini and Moore retain their value even though the world owned at the same time a Schubert and a Shelley. Nowhere are the distinguishing characteristics of the different English poets of this period more clearly reflected than in their love poems; whilst at the same time the Naturalism distinguishing the period stands out in sharp contrast to the supernaturalism of the erotic poetry of the German and French reaction periods. Byron's description of his most beautiful female character as "Nature's bride and Passion's child" (Don Juan ii. 202), and his description of the love of Don Juan and Haidée:
"This is in others a factitious state,
An opium dream of too much youth and reading,
But was in them their nature or their fate,"
might serve as characterisations of the love celebrated in the amatory poetry of the majority of his contemporaries. But only in Don Juan has Byron painted happy love. His erotic poems are nothing but misery and lamentation. The most marvellous of them all, "When we two parted," has a sob in its very rhythm; and the whole pain of parting is conveyed by the manner in which the rhythm suddenly changes in the last verse. In the first lines there is still a certain calmness of passion:
"When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
But all the misery of love is expressed in the short, abrupt cadences of the concluding stanza:
"In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears."
The peculiar domain of Byronic love-poetry is that of the tortures of love.