Last Rose of Summer, The

DESCRIPTION: "'Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone, All her lovely companions are faded and gone." The singer promises not to leave this flower even when other flowers are "scentless and dead": "Oh! Who would inhabit this bleak world alone!"
AUTHOR: Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
EARLIEST DATE: 1813 (Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic)
KEYWORDS: flowers love nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Moore-IrishMelodies-1846, pp. 95-96, "'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, p. 146, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text, 1 tune)
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #88, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text)
Hylands-Mammoth-Hibernian-Songster, p. 59, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1227, p. 84, "The Last Rose of Summer" (5 references)
Dime-Song-Book #5/72, p. 20 and #5/64, p. 18, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 582-583, "'Tis the Last Rose of Summer"
Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 35, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text, 1 tune)
National-4HClubSongBook, p. 25, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, LASTROSE*
ADDITIONAL: Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 378-379, "The Last Rose of Summer" (1 text)
Charles W. Eliot, editor, English Poetry Vol II From Collins to Fitzgerald (New York, 1910), #487, p. 818, "The Last Rose of Summer" (by Thomas Moore)
Roud #13861
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Castle Hyde" (tune)
cf. "Bells of Shandon" (tune)
SAME TUNE:
The Loafer's Lament (File: ChMS161)
The Groves of Blarney (File: OCon033) (per Hoagland in the notes to "Castle Hyde" and to William H. A. Williams, _'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream_, University of Illinois Press, 1996, p. 37)
Castle Hyde (Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 254-255)
NOTES [61 words]: Dr. William Mahar claims this is one of the six most popular songs of the Civil War era. I've no idea what his evidence for this was; I've never seen it mentioned in any Civil War history.
This is another of Moore's pieces that was very popular in print (Granger's Index to Poetry has 15 references to it) but which seems to have had little vogue in tradition. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: DTlastro

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