Coleridge, it is true, and Scott had employed a broken rhythm, substituting the temporal for the syllabic ictus, to vary the monotony of the eight-syllabled narrative verse. But, to judge of the best that could be done before Moore's time with a purely anapæstic measure, one may refer to Wordsworth's "At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears." These verses are sufficiently destitute of the lyrical quality which is so constantly present in any work of Shelley's. But Moore had done all but all his best work, before Shelley had written six poems worthy of remembrance.
Going back, as we have seen, to the seventeenth century for his inspiration in style, Moore began by using only the trochaic and iambic measures. In the Epistles and Odes, we find one epistle (that to Atkinson) written in well-managed anapæests, but more notable is the very delicate rhythm of the Canadian Boat Song—inspired by a tune. It is Moore's great distinction that he brought into English verse something of the variety and multiplicity of musical rhythms. When the Irish Melodies began to appear, it is no wonder that readers should have been dazzled by the skill with which a profusion of metres were handled; and the poet showed himself even more inventive in rhythms than in stanzas.
The most curious part of the matter is that Moore was really importing into English poetry some of the characteristics of a literature which he did not know. He had not a word of Gaelic, and (like O'Connell) desired to see it die out. He observes that Spanish alone of European metrical systems employs "assonantic" instead of consonantic rhyme, though he was bred in a country where rhyme of this order had been brought to an extraordinary pitch of perfection. But he based his work upon Irish times, composed in the primitive manner, before music was divorced from poetry. One may say, virtually, that in fitting words to these tunes, he reproduced in English the rhythms of Irish folk song.
The thing was not done completely: for instance, in the first number of the Melodies, the song "Erin, the smile and the tear in thine eye," is to the tune of "Eileen Aroon," and the Irish words (which survive in this instance and, I am told by my friend Mr. O'Neil Russell, in only one other), do not correspond in metre with Moore's. He has varied the tune, and is consequently using a different stanza, which corresponds with the Irish only in the last three lines of the refrain. In the other instance, that of "O blame not the bard," there is a general correspondence in metre, but here the Irish metre is one not very different from an ordinary English stanza—though, as usual in Irish folk-poetry, the line is measured by time and not by syllables.
The need for fitting metre to music forced Moore into employing a wide variety of stanzas; and his example was of service in a day which had been little used to anything but the couplet and quatrain of three or four well-worn types. But by far more remarkable was the achievement in three separate poems of a metrical effect wholly new in English. Of these, one is probably the most beautiful lyric that Moore ever wrote:—
"At the mid hour of night, when the stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky!
"Then I sing the wild song 'twas once such pleasure, to hear,
When our voices, commingling, breathed, like one, on the ear;
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, O my love! 'tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of Souls,
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear."
In the second, the same structure is used for the line, but with a different and simpler stanza:—
"Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheer'd my way,
Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round me lay;
The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burn'd;
Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turn'd;
Yes, slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free,
And bless'd even the sorrows that made me more dear to thee.
"Thy rival was honour'd, whilst thou wert wrong'd and scorn'd,
Thy crown was of briers, while gold her brows adorn'd;
She woo'd me to temples, while thou layest hid in caves,
Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas! were slaves;
Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be,
Than wed what I love not, or turn one thought from thee.
"They slander thee sorely, who say thy vows are frail—
Hadst thou been a false one, thy cheek had look'd less pale,
They say too, so long thou hast worn those lingering chains,
That deep in thy heart they have printed their servile stains—
Oh! foul is the slander—no chain could that soul subdue—
Where shineth thy spirit, there liberty shineth too!"
In these verses we have of course an allegory. By a fashion common in Irish poetry, the poet expresses as a love song his political allegiance—though here the Catholic Church, rather than Ireland, is the "Dark Rosaleen" or "Kathleen ni Houlihan," to whom the passion is addressed. The third of this remarkable group has been quoted already: it is Moore's rebuke to Ireland, or to O'Connell, "The dream of those days when first I sung thee is o'er"; and it is very notable that for such an occasion he should have chosen his most distinctively Irish manner. The peculiarity of these metres—the dragging, wavering cadence that half baulks the ear—is the distinctive characteristic of Irish verse. No English poet, so far as I know, has caught it; but Mangan gave this character to some of his finest renderings from the Irish, and in our own day Mr. Yeats has shown an increasing tendency towards this subtle and evasive beauty.
It is I think mainly as an artist in metre that Moore still holds an importance in the history of English poetry; and any one considering the poems just quoted will see how individual and original were his achievements. But the admirable qualities in his verse by which he impressed his contemporaries were rather those of lightness and swiftness: its sweetness, of which much was made, is a good deal less admirable. For this, however, the nature of his best lyric work was largely responsible.