Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, songwriter, and prose writer born in Dublin on May 28, 1779, into a Roman Catholic family. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, after the easing of restrictions on Catholic students and later went to London, where he entered the Middle Temple. At Trinity he knew Robert Emmet, later a leader of the 1803 Irish rebellion, although Moore himself pursued a literary rather than revolutionary career.

Moore became one of the best-known Irish literary figures of his generation. His “Irish Melodies,” created with traditional Irish airs, included songs such as “The Last Rose of Summer” and “The Minstrel Boy,” while his oriental romance “Lalla Rookh” brought him further international reputation. His sacred songs were a smaller part of a much broader literary output and were originally conceived as devotional art songs rather than congregational hymns.

“Come, Ye Disconsolate” appeared in the second series of Moore’s “Sacred Songs” in 1824. Thomas Hastings later reshaped the text for American congregational use in 1831, preserving Moore’s first two stanzas in altered form and replacing the original final stanza. The version most churches know is therefore a Moore-Hastings text rather than Moore’s poem unchanged.