Poems and Songs by Sir Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 28th of May 1780. His aptitude for verse appeared at an early age. In 1790 he composed an epilogue to a piece acted at the house of Lady Borrows, in Dublin; and in his fourteenth year he wrote a sonnet to Mr. Whyte, which was published in a Dublin magazine. He graduated from Trinity College in November, 1799. The bar was the career which his parents, and especially his mother, wished Thomas to pursue; neither of them had much faith in poetry or literature as a resource for his subsistence. Accordingly, in 1799, he crossed over into England, and studied in the Middle Temple; and he was afterwards called to the bar, but literary pursuits withheld him from practicing. In 1802 Moore produced his first volume of original verse, the Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little. In 1811, he married Miss Bessy Dyke, a lady who made an excellent and devoted wife. After a while, he removed from London, with his wife and young family, to Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He died on the 25th of February 1853 and is buried in Bromham Cemetery, Sloperton near Devizes in Wiltshire, England.

The Mad Tory and the Comet - a poem by Sir Thomas Moore.