Moore had earned his fame by writings, amatory, political, and satirical, which it came natural to him to produce, because he was "a poetical animal"; Lalla Rookh was, in great measure, work done against the grain, and relying for its success on the secondary qualities of elaborate finish, profusion of ornament, and variety of interest. These qualities, however, were present in no common degree, and the poem's success is not to be wondered at. The dose of novelty in style was just sufficient to attract, without offending by its revolt against "the Popish sing-song." It was indeed so perfectly in the fashion of its time, as to be inevitably demoded after a lapse of years. The florid loops and curves of the Regency period in decorative art have their equivalent in Moore's profuse and lengthily elaborated metaphors. Certain features of the work must be unreservedly condemned. The prose narrative in which the four poems are set is deplorable—sprightly beyond endurance; and in the Veiled Prophet Moore tears one passion after another to tatters in bursts of sheer rhetoric. Yet even here good lines are plenty, though they are all in metaphors, or some other excrescence; for instance—
"Hundreds of banners to the sunbeam spread
Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan
The flying throne of star-taught Soliman."
In Paradise and the Peri we have a production more within the poet's range. A prettier example of an Arabian Nights Tale, done into springing, easy verse, it would be difficult to find. The idea, neat and graceful, could have been treated within the compass of a song, which should tell how the exiled Peri was promised admittance if she brought "the gift that is most dear to Heaven"; how she tried first the patriot hero's life-blood—(shed in vain); then the last sigh of the maiden who chose to share the death of her true love; and, last of all, how she won home with the tear of repentance from a Byronic sinner. All through the poem there is the suggestion of singing, and, as Scott said, "Moore beats us all at a song."
From "The Fire Worshippers" I have quoted already the best passages, those which express most fully the germinal idea. One may add an energetic denunciation, which had its full application, for instance, to Leonard McNally, Emmet's advocate, who defended most of the Irish political prisoners during a long period of time, and regularly sold the secrets of his defence to the Government.
"Oh, for a tongue to curse the slave,
Whose treason, like a deadly blight,
Comes o'er the councils of the brave,
And blasts them in their hour of might!
May life's unblessed cup for him
Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim,—
With hopes, that but allure to fly,
With joys, that vanish while he sips,
Like Dead-Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips!
His country's curse, his children's shame,
Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame,
May he, at last, with lips of flame,
On the parch'd desert thirsting die,—
While lakes, that shone in mockery nigh,
Are fading off, untouch'd, untasted,
Like the once glorious hopes he blasted!
And, when from earth his spirit flies,
Just Prophet, let the damn'd-one dwell
Full in the sight of Paradise,
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell!"
Last of all, and most lavishly decorated, is the story of the Feast of Roses at Cashmere. The opening passage is a good example of Moore's high-wrought effort after Eastern local colour:—
"Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave,
Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?
"Oh I to see it at sunset,—when warm o'er the Lake
Its splendour at parting a summer eve throws,
Like a bride, full of blushes, when ling'ring to take
A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes!—
When the shrines through the foliage are gleaming half-shown,
And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own.
Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells,
Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging,
And here, at the altar, a zone of sweet bells
Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing.
Or to see it by moonlight,—when mellowly shines
The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines;
When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of stars,
And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Chenars
Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet
From the cool, shining walks where the young people meet.—
Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes
A new wonder each minute, as slowly it breaks,
Hills, cupolas, fountains, call'd forth every one
Out of darkness, as they were just horn of the sun,
When the Spirit of Fragrance is up with the day,
From his harem of night-flowers stealing away;
And the wind, full of wantonness, wooes like a lover
The young aspen-trees till they tremble all over.
When the East is as warm as the light of first hopes,
And Day, with his banner of radiance unfurl'd,
Shines in through the mountainous portal that opes,
Sublime, from that Valley of bliss to the world!"
But one finds a more real example of Moore's poetry in this quatrain:—
"There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright,
Like the long, sunny lapse of a summer day's light,
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till Love falls asleep in its sameness of splendour."
If one compares passages like these with, for instance, Cowper's anapaests, even in so beautiful a poem as "The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade," it will be seen that Moore helped on the extraordinary advance in poetical technique which marks the years from 1795 to the rise of Tennyson. Moore's sense of style is always faulty—witness the very next couplet:—