This Life Is All Checkered with Pleasures and Woes

Thomas Moore poem set to music

This Life Is All Checkered with Pleasures and Woes, is a poem by Thomas Moore. It is from Moore’s Irish Melodies collection.

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It was set to music with the air - The Bunch of Green Rushes that Grew at the Brim, arranged by Charles Villiers Stanford.

Below is the illustration for This Life Is All Checkered With Pleasures And Woes from Moore’s Irish Melodies 1846 Edition.

This life is all checkered with pleasures and woes

This life is all checkered with pleasures and woes,
That chase one another like waves of the deep,-
Each brightly or darkly, as onward it flows,
Reflecting our eyes, as they sparkle or weep.

So closely our whims on our miseries tread,
That the laugh is awaked ere the tear can be dried;
And, as fast as the rain-drop of Pity is shed.
The goose-plumage of Folly can turn it aside.

But pledge me the cup-if existence would cloy,
With hearts ever happy, and heads ever wise,
Be ours the light Sorrow, half-sister to Joy,
And the light, brilliant Folly that flashes and dies.

When Hylas was sent with his urn to the fount,
Thro’ fields full of light, and with heart full of play,
Light rambled the boy, over meadow and mount,
And neglected his task for the flowers on the way.

The bunch of green rushes that grew at the brim

This air was arranged by Charles Villiers Stanford.

Unfortunately, we haven’t found any videos or midis of this air. If anyone can help?

Below is the musical score of the air published in 1895. Note, the speling of ‘checkered’ is different on the music score.

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