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.
Thomas Campbell has not written many purely erotic poems--he prefers
the shorter or longer love-story in verse to the personal outburst--but
some of the few are as tender in tone as Moore's or Keats's. And,
strange to say, he becomes warmer, tenderer, less restrained in
expression as time passes. It is as an old man that he writes his
most amatory verse. To the remonstrance of conscience, that Platonic
friendship should content him at his years, he answers by a challenge
to Plato himself in the skies to look into the eyes of a certain lady
"and try to be Platonic."
He sings of the transient nature of love, of the suffering occasioned
by the absence of the beloved; he puts into words the sufferings of
the maid whose lover is "never wedding, ever wooing." But he is most
characteristically himself as the erotic poet when he confesses, with
a half mournful smile, that his heart is younger than his years, as in
the following verses:--
"The god left my heart, at its surly reflections,
But came back on pretext of some sweet recollections,
And he made me forget what I ought to remember,
That the rose-bud of June cannot bloom in November.
Ah! Tom, 'tis all o'er with thy gay days--
Write psalms, and not songs for the ladies.
But time's been so far from my wisdom enriching,
That the longer I live, beauty seems more bewitching;
And the only new lore my experience traces,
Is to find fresh enchantment in magical faces.
How weary is wisdom, how weary!
When one sits by a smiling young dearie!"
Keats's erotic verse is, as was to be expected, burning, breathless,
sensual; it revels in fragrance and sweet sounds. Read this masterly
verse:--
"Lift the latch! ah gently! ah tenderly--sweet!
We are dead if that latchet gives one little clink!
Well done--now those lips, and a flowery seat--
The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink;
The shut rose shall dream of our loves, and awake
Full blown, and such warmth for the morning's take;
The stock-dove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo,
While I kiss to the melody, aching all through."
Shelley's love-poetry is at one and the same time hyper-spiritual
and meltingly sensuous. We are reminded by it of Correggio. In the
productions of both these artists the expression of the most utter
self-surrender is blent with the expression of the most violent sensual
excitement; what Shelley describes is the erotic death-struggle. Take
the concluding verse of the _The Indian Serenade_:--
"Oh lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh! press it to thine own again
Where it will break at last."