The Last Rose of Summer

by THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852)

‘TIS the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To 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 Loves shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?

Irish poet, friend of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Moore’s writings range from lyric to satire, from prose romance to history and biography. His popular IRISH MELODIES appeared in ten parts between 1807 and 1835. Moore was born in Dublin as the son of a grocer. His background was poor and he never varnished it. In his poem ‘Epitaph on a Tuft-Hunter’ he mocked snobbery: “Heaven grant him now some noble nook For, rest his soul! he’d rather be Genteelly damn’d beside a Duke, Than sav’d in vulgar company.”

Thomas Moore Contemporaries
William Wordsworth
Sir Walter Scott
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Leigh Hunt