Thomas Moore & The Last Rose of Summer

Some poems are written to go with music, as songs. One of my favourites is Irish poet Thomas Moore’s The Last Rose of Summer. He wrote the words in 1805 and published it in his volume Irish Melodies. The music he chose to go with his words was a traditional tune called ‘The Young Man’s Dream’, transcribed by Edward Bunting in 1792 and based on a performance by a harper at the Belfast Harp Festival.

The Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore

‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or 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?

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852) wrote the lyrics on a visit to County Kilkenny, where he was supposed to have been inspired by a beautiful pink rose named Rosa Old Blush. It soon became a very well-known song and is familiar still to so many today. It was mentioned in Middlemarch, The Moonstone and Ulysses, it was hummed in the TV programme I Love Lucy, while the music has been part of the background music in many different films.

The words are melancholy ones, with the poem’s themes being mortality, the fleeting nature of life and love, and loneliness. The image of a single rose evokes isolation and the passing of time. The poet writes in a quiet reflective way about absence and change. Moore did write on political and satirical topics (like his satirical friend, the great Lord Byron), but this poem is more sentimental. In just a few stanzas, Moore condenses emotional complexity into a simple form. He was regarded in his lifetime as Ireland’s National Bard.