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Lalla Rookh
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304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1817
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332 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Moore
1,047 books62 followersThomas Moore, was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot.
Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation, Moore was seen to defend the tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald depicts the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. Complementing Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Memoirs of Captain Rock is a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism".
Today Moore is remembered almost alone either for his Irish Melodies (typically "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Last Rose of Summer") or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron.
Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore did not profess religious piety. Yet in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation, Moore was seen to defend the tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies. The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald depicts the United Irish leader as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform. Complementing Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Memoirs of Captain Rock is a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism".
Today Moore is remembered almost alone either for his Irish Melodies (typically "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Last Rose of Summer") or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 10, 2017
It is kind of hard to imagine that reading a book about the life of famous pacing horse Dan Patch would lead me to poetry, but that is exactly what has happened.
I am reading Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America and am learning all sorts of interesting little nuggets of trivia, like the fact that the dam (mother, for you non-horse people) of Dan Patch was "Named for an obscure character in Irish poet Thomas Moore's 1817 epic Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance..."
Those of you who know me and my Project Gutenberg addiction will know that reading the above sentence was like having chocolate on a stick held before my nose.
Of course I went to see if Gutenberg had the poem.
Of course they did.
Of course I decided to put it on a Someday List.
But when I opened the link to the book that held the poem, it was The Complete Works Of Thomas Moore. All first lines and titles were listed alphabetically (and there were gazillions of entries on the list!) so I scrolled confidently down to 'L' and found Lalla Rookh. But when I clicked on the title I discovered a stumbling block.
In many such books at PG you can click on a title or page number and whoosh, there you are at the specific poem you want to read. Not here. And in many other such books the various poems or stories are politely printed just as they are listed in the contents page. Not here. I had to scroll and scroll and scroll (one more) and scroll before I found that epic poem. By then I decided that instead of reading it Someday, I would read it NOW so I would not have to do all that scrolling again.
Lalla Rookh is a princess bride on a journey to marry a king. The piece starts off in regular prose, introducing the situation and some of her fellow travelers. Of course any princess gets bored with real life sooner or later, and it becomes harder to keep Lalla Rookh happy during the journey, until someone remembers that the king groom (assuming that is an acceptable description) had sent a poet to travel with the caravan and entertain the princess. So the poet is summoned, and he tells four stories (in verse) over the course of their trip.
Zelica is a maiden in the first story, called The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. Other poems recited were Paradise And The Peri, The Story Of The Fire-Worshippers, and The Light Of The Haram.
In between these evening recitals the journey continues, the Chamberlain criticizes the poet for his meager talent, the Princess realizes she has fallen in love with the poet, and her ladies see her beauty fading from the fretting she begins to do so they start worrying about what kind of reception they all will have once they get to the King's palace.
I thought the entire work was charming. I do wish I could have read the footnotes as they appeared, because each one would have explained a reference to a character or place used in the poems. But there were 348 footnotes and I would have had to do a lot more scrolling than I wanted to bother with, so I skimmed them when I got to the end. I had not expected Moore to use so many historical place names, real people, or legendary events in the poem, but he had. I really enjoyed this work and would like to read more about those legends and so on from Persia and the other countries he mentions.
Meanwhile, just what kind of trap is this sneaky (but incredibly handsome) poet arranging for our Princess Lalla Rookh, anyway? What secret messages were in his pretty words, woven into the themes of his poems? Will that snooty Chamberlain be able to keep the poet and the princess apart? What will happen when they all finally meet the King?
I guessed, but not until just before everything took place, so I suppose that doesn't count, does it.
And I never could decide just why the owner of Zelica the horse decided to use that name when he was filling out the registration papers for his mare. If he was reading Lalla Rookh at the time, I would have thought he would name his horse Lalla Rookh, but maybe he just liked the look and sound of 'Zelica' better. Luckily the horse did not take after her namesake.....the human Zelica was more than a little insane because of the death of her betrothed.
And there is the story of how a horse book led me to an epic poem, which seems to have led me to an epic-length review. Sorry about that, but thanks for reading!
I am reading Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America and am learning all sorts of interesting little nuggets of trivia, like the fact that the dam (mother, for you non-horse people) of Dan Patch was "Named for an obscure character in Irish poet Thomas Moore's 1817 epic Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance..."
Those of you who know me and my Project Gutenberg addiction will know that reading the above sentence was like having chocolate on a stick held before my nose.
Of course I went to see if Gutenberg had the poem.
Of course they did.
Of course I decided to put it on a Someday List.
But when I opened the link to the book that held the poem, it was The Complete Works Of Thomas Moore. All first lines and titles were listed alphabetically (and there were gazillions of entries on the list!) so I scrolled confidently down to 'L' and found Lalla Rookh. But when I clicked on the title I discovered a stumbling block.
In many such books at PG you can click on a title or page number and whoosh, there you are at the specific poem you want to read. Not here. And in many other such books the various poems or stories are politely printed just as they are listed in the contents page. Not here. I had to scroll and scroll and scroll (one more) and scroll before I found that epic poem. By then I decided that instead of reading it Someday, I would read it NOW so I would not have to do all that scrolling again.
Lalla Rookh is a princess bride on a journey to marry a king. The piece starts off in regular prose, introducing the situation and some of her fellow travelers. Of course any princess gets bored with real life sooner or later, and it becomes harder to keep Lalla Rookh happy during the journey, until someone remembers that the king groom (assuming that is an acceptable description) had sent a poet to travel with the caravan and entertain the princess. So the poet is summoned, and he tells four stories (in verse) over the course of their trip.
Zelica is a maiden in the first story, called The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. Other poems recited were Paradise And The Peri, The Story Of The Fire-Worshippers, and The Light Of The Haram.
In between these evening recitals the journey continues, the Chamberlain criticizes the poet for his meager talent, the Princess realizes she has fallen in love with the poet, and her ladies see her beauty fading from the fretting she begins to do so they start worrying about what kind of reception they all will have once they get to the King's palace.
I thought the entire work was charming. I do wish I could have read the footnotes as they appeared, because each one would have explained a reference to a character or place used in the poems. But there were 348 footnotes and I would have had to do a lot more scrolling than I wanted to bother with, so I skimmed them when I got to the end. I had not expected Moore to use so many historical place names, real people, or legendary events in the poem, but he had. I really enjoyed this work and would like to read more about those legends and so on from Persia and the other countries he mentions.
Meanwhile, just what kind of trap is this sneaky (but incredibly handsome) poet arranging for our Princess Lalla Rookh, anyway? What secret messages were in his pretty words, woven into the themes of his poems? Will that snooty Chamberlain be able to keep the poet and the princess apart? What will happen when they all finally meet the King?
I guessed, but not until just before everything took place, so I suppose that doesn't count, does it.
And I never could decide just why the owner of Zelica the horse decided to use that name when he was filling out the registration papers for his mare. If he was reading Lalla Rookh at the time, I would have thought he would name his horse Lalla Rookh, but maybe he just liked the look and sound of 'Zelica' better. Luckily the horse did not take after her namesake.....the human Zelica was more than a little insane because of the death of her betrothed.
And there is the story of how a horse book led me to an epic poem, which seems to have led me to an epic-length review. Sorry about that, but thanks for reading!
June 10, 2015
I stumbled across Lalla Rookh while reading Middlemarch by George Eliot. So now that I've been going back through my notes on Middlemarch, I decided to pick it up. I'm surprised that I haven't gotten a hint of it before now. There's a lot of references I'm going to enjoy going back and researching.
September 21, 2018
Romantic and heady. It's the kind of book you want to go out and buy yourself some roses after reading.
October 1, 2025
Except for the title, there isn't much from 'Bahar-e Danesh' in it.
There's a sense of humor in the prose that the verses don't share, and they don't flow with the same smoothness in all the parts.
I have to say it was sort of cute to see the staples of the classic Persian poetry used in this way!
The labors the poet took in his studies are evident, even though the historical events and characters he'd chosen are all fictionalized.
There are some errors in details and technicality, but it's amazing, how Moore, like Montesquieu, from miles away, had been able to achieve such knowledge and understanding of a certain religion and how it works.
Moreover, I should've read it before delving into Poe's poems, since he owed to Lalla Rookh at least part of his vocabulary.
Read
October 9, 2025FINALLY I FINISHED IT
June 27, 2016
This is a masterpiece of narrative poetry. It was one of the best-selling books of its day in England, and it's easy to see why. Thomas Moore was a man of learning and wit, and had an ear for smooth and melodious verse. He slaved over "Lalla Rookh" for years, carefully researching its stories and imagery, polishing and polishing the verse, pouring all his learning and philosophy into its pages.
It is a cycle of four oriental tales, contained in a broader frame tale. Lalla Rookh is a young indian princess, on the way to her wedding. On the way, the passionate and handsome young Fermaroz tells her four tales, while her puritanical chamberlain, Fadladeen, criticises them for their energy and religious heterodoxy. The tales are told in a variety of poetic forms: "The Veiled Prophet" is written in heroic couplets, while the others are all written in a mixture of metres, and include a number of lovely songs and lyrics.
The main themes of the stories are love, religion and idealism. Every page breathes the spirit of Moore's tolerance and sympathy. Two main arguments emerge as the stories unfold: people require an ideal, whether romantic, religious, or political, to give order and meaning to their lives; and since people serve different ideals, we need to be open, and tolerant of others' faiths. Both "The Veiled Prophet" and "The Fire-Worshippers" describe religious wars, and it is not hard to see both as allegories for Thomas Moore's own dear Ireland, whose subjugation and depredations Moore deeply deplored.
The great critic William Hazlitt dismissed this poem as finely polished but lacking depth. Two centuries later, I think we can revise this judgment. It is true that Moore's poem is extremely melodious, and is filled with extravagant, beautiful images culled from the writings of the great orientalists. But it is also true that Moore's psychological realism and philosophical acumen are nearly unprecedented in narrative verse. Moore borrows techniques of psychological description from the novelists of his day, for example, free indirect discourse; and his reflections on his characters' motivations and actions display a thorough knowledge of eighteenth-century philosophy of mind.
If the book has one flaw, it is that its tone does not vary much, and indeed is clichéd. This is the magical, mystical, tragical, tyrannical world of the Orient, where all lovers are doomed and everyone is either a poet or a religious maniac. But the other beauties of the book outweigh this flaw, and it remains an engrossing and uplifting read from start to finish.
It is a cycle of four oriental tales, contained in a broader frame tale. Lalla Rookh is a young indian princess, on the way to her wedding. On the way, the passionate and handsome young Fermaroz tells her four tales, while her puritanical chamberlain, Fadladeen, criticises them for their energy and religious heterodoxy. The tales are told in a variety of poetic forms: "The Veiled Prophet" is written in heroic couplets, while the others are all written in a mixture of metres, and include a number of lovely songs and lyrics.
The main themes of the stories are love, religion and idealism. Every page breathes the spirit of Moore's tolerance and sympathy. Two main arguments emerge as the stories unfold: people require an ideal, whether romantic, religious, or political, to give order and meaning to their lives; and since people serve different ideals, we need to be open, and tolerant of others' faiths. Both "The Veiled Prophet" and "The Fire-Worshippers" describe religious wars, and it is not hard to see both as allegories for Thomas Moore's own dear Ireland, whose subjugation and depredations Moore deeply deplored.
The great critic William Hazlitt dismissed this poem as finely polished but lacking depth. Two centuries later, I think we can revise this judgment. It is true that Moore's poem is extremely melodious, and is filled with extravagant, beautiful images culled from the writings of the great orientalists. But it is also true that Moore's psychological realism and philosophical acumen are nearly unprecedented in narrative verse. Moore borrows techniques of psychological description from the novelists of his day, for example, free indirect discourse; and his reflections on his characters' motivations and actions display a thorough knowledge of eighteenth-century philosophy of mind.
If the book has one flaw, it is that its tone does not vary much, and indeed is clichéd. This is the magical, mystical, tragical, tyrannical world of the Orient, where all lovers are doomed and everyone is either a poet or a religious maniac. But the other beauties of the book outweigh this flaw, and it remains an engrossing and uplifting read from start to finish.
September 16, 2013
It's difficult to know, at a distance of 200 years, what made this a best seller of its time. The versification is facile enough, and the framing device simple but effective - but the poetry! Moore puts these words into the mouth of one of his characters;
"The profusion, indeed, of flowers and birds, which this poet had ready on all occasions, —not to mention dews, gems, etc.—was a most oppressive kind of opulence to his hearers; and had the unlucky effect of giving to his style all the glitter of the flower garden without its method, and all the flutter of the aviary without its song. In addition to this, he chose his subjects badly, and was always most inspired by the worst parts of them. The charms of paganism, the merits of rebellion,—these were the themes honored with his particular enthusiasm..."
Now given that Fadladeen is a figure of fun who gets everything wrong, I assume that we are meant to despise his judgement; me,I'm with him all the way, it's nigh on unreadable, and how it managed to inspire all those artists etc is quite beyond me.
"The profusion, indeed, of flowers and birds, which this poet had ready on all occasions, —not to mention dews, gems, etc.—was a most oppressive kind of opulence to his hearers; and had the unlucky effect of giving to his style all the glitter of the flower garden without its method, and all the flutter of the aviary without its song. In addition to this, he chose his subjects badly, and was always most inspired by the worst parts of them. The charms of paganism, the merits of rebellion,—these were the themes honored with his particular enthusiasm..."
Now given that Fadladeen is a figure of fun who gets everything wrong, I assume that we are meant to despise his judgement; me,I'm with him all the way, it's nigh on unreadable, and how it managed to inspire all those artists etc is quite beyond me.
October 23, 2020
This is an Orientalist romp that takes inspiration from Persian poetry, 1001 Arabian Nights and traveller accounts of Mughal India. Lalla Rookh inspired Western artists to visit the Vale of Kashmir and European musicians to compose operas, which is itself its greatest success. It is fundamentally Oriental pastiche and by no means comparable to Indian, Persian and Arab Master poets and orators.
For readers who wish to have a more authentic experience read Sheikh Saadi's Bustan, Nizami, Ghalib, Baburnama, Jahangirnama. An easier read is Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence, set in Mughal India, Florence and Ottoman Turkey.
For readers who wish to have a more authentic experience read Sheikh Saadi's Bustan, Nizami, Ghalib, Baburnama, Jahangirnama. An easier read is Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence, set in Mughal India, Florence and Ottoman Turkey.
June 30, 2022
worth reading for some lyric poems by Moore (whom I know from his Irish songs). Certainly worthwhile but like others I read only a few ballads here and there but skimmed most of the book. I got the book (19th century edition) for free so I am glad to be introduced to it.
April 10, 2025
I endeavored to read the oldest book in my library's system, and I stumbled upon Lalla Rookh. The copy from my library doesn't contain a publication date, but I suspect this dates to the 1880s or 1890s. It was interesting to read and worth seeking out.
March 30, 2023
👍Thomas 🌷🙏📖🙏🌷 Moore 👌
March 30, 2015
A pleasant romp through a mythical East, at least as conceived by the West of the 19th century. Though perhaps no one would call Lalla Rookh a masterpiece, these verses present consistently lovely, and sometimes even stunning, imagery. Moore also impresses in his ability to weave an amazing number of allusions into his tales, taken from legends, literary sources, travelogues, etc. An easy read, except in the occasional use of words unfamiliar to the modern ear, this little book is recommended to anyone who wants a short, fantastical vacation from the here and now.
October 18, 2011
Read it many years ago & wish I still had it. It was slow reading with wonderful lithographs.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews