Editing Thomas Moore (section)

==Death and receding reputation== 
{{Quote box
| width = 275px
| align = right
| quoted = true
| bgcolor = #FFFFF0
| salign = right
| quote = <poem>
'''''Thou Art, O God --'''''

THOU art, O God, the life and light
    Of all this wondrous world we see;
Its glow by day, its smile by night,
    Are but reflections caught from thee.
Where'er we turn thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine!

When day, with farewell beam, delays
    Among the opening clouds of even,
And we can almost think we gaze
    Through golden vistas into heaven, -
Those hues that make the sun's decline
So soft, so radiant, Lord! are thine.

When night, with wings of starry gloom,
    O'ershadows all the earth and skies,
Like some dark, beauteous bird, whose plume
    Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes, -
That sacred gloom, those fires divine,
So grand, so countless, Lord! are thine.

When youthful spring around us breathes,
    Thy Spirit warms her fragrant sigh;
And every flower the summer wreaths
    Is born beneath that kindling eye.
Where'er we turn, thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine!
</poem>
| source = ''By Thomas Moore''<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kXd4bRr71a4C&dq=Thomas+Moore+Those+Evening+Bells&pg=PA281 ''A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from The Best Poets. With An Introduction by William Cullen Bryant''], New York, J.B. Ford and Company, 1871, pp. 281-282.</ref>
}}

In the late 1840s (and as the catastrophe of the [[Great Irish Famine|Great Famine]] overtook Ireland), Moore's powers began to fail. He was reduced ultimately to senility, which came suddenly in December 1849.  Moore died on 25 February 1852, in his seventy-third year, having outlived his wife, his five children and most of his friends and companions.  [[File:Ottawa Public Library.jpg|thumb|left|Window at [[Ottawa Public Library]] features Moore with [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]], [[Archibald Lampman]], [[Walter Scott]], [[Lord Byron|Byron]], [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]], and [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] ]]
He was buried in Bromham churchyard within view of his cottage home, and beside his daughter Anastasia (who had died aged 17), near Devizes in Wiltshire.<ref name=":2">{{Cite encyclopedia|title=Thomas Moore|url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10553b.htm|access-date=9 March 2023|encyclopedia=The Catholic Encyclopedia|volume=10|date=1911}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Thomas Moore – Irish Biography|url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/ThomasMoore.php|access-date=11 April 2021|website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref>

His epitaph at his St. Nicholas churchyard grave is inscribed with his [https://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/eire/dearharp.htm own verse]:

{{Blockquote|text=Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,<br>
The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long,<br>
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,<br>
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom and song!}}

Moore had appointed as his literary executor'','' [[John Russell, 1st Earl Russell|Lord John Russell]], the Whig leader who, just four days before Moore's death, had ended his [[First Russell ministry|first term as Prime Minister]]. Russell dutifully published Moore's papers in accordance with his late friend's wishes. The ''Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore'' appeared in eight volumes, published between 1853 and 1856.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Moore |first=Thomas |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/memoirs-journal-and-correspondence-of-thomas-moore/37A11AE62C8919C62BDA12EB5D1D739E |title=Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore |date=2013 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-05894-0 |editor-last=Russell |editor-first=John |series=Cambridge Library Collection – Literary Studies |volume=3 |location=Cambridge |doi=10.1017/cbo9781139567343}}</ref> But, while popular editions of his ''Melodies'' and ''Airs'' continued for some time to appear, in post-famine Ireland Moore's literary stock "crashed".<ref name=":4" /> 

Not only did the bathos and nostalgia of Moore's verse appear suspect, as a form of home and public entertainment its reading and recitation did not survive the developments in mass media: cheap print, the recorded voice, the moving image. As a form, the verse narrative was almost entirely abandoned.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-03-04 |title=“A Two-Way Street in Time”: A Conversation with Poet and Translator Andrew Frisardi |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-two-way-street-in-time-a-conversation-with-poet-and-translator-andrew-frisardi/ |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books}}</ref> Describing his burial site in 1937, Moore's biographer [[Howard Mumford Jones]] wrote: "To the grave of a Catholic buried in a Protestant churchyard, of an Irishman at rest in Wiltshire, of the genius once thought to be immortal and now no longer read, almost no one comes".<ref name=":4" /> 

Almost "totally forgotten, except in parish halls, or Hibernian evenings in Brooklyn or Melbourne", a major biography of Moore does not appear until 2008,<ref name=":5" /> ''The Bard of Erin, The Life of Thomas Moore'' by Ronan Kelly.<ref name=":6" />