"The Last Rose of Summer" is a poem by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. He wrote it in 1805, while staying at Jenkinstown Castle in County Kilkenny, Ireland, where he was said to have been inspired by a specimen of Rosa 'Old Blush'.
Rosa 'Old Blush'
Sheet music of The Last Rose of Summer
Thomas Moore, also known as Tom 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.
Thomas Moore, after a painting by Thomas Lawrence
Moore as a young man
"The Installation of Captain Rock", Daniel Maclise, 1834
"Terrors of Emancipation" – The Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1829