Oh! what was love made for, if 'tis not the same
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?
I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments of bliss,
And thy Angel I'll be, 'mid the horrors of this,-
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee,- or perish there tool
It has been the fashion of late days to deny Moore Imagination,
while granting him Fancy- a distinction originating with Coleridge-
than whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore.
The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over
all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to
have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. But
never was there a greater mistake. Never was a grosser wrong done
the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the English language I
can call to mind no poem more profoundly- more weirdly imaginative, in
the best sense, than the lines commencing- "I would I were by that dim
lake"- which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am
unable to remember them.
One of the noblest- and, speaking of Fancy- one of the most
singularly fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood.
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