English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Charles Wolfe
494. The Burial of Sir John Moore At Corunna
N
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero was buried.
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,—
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
When the clock struck the hour for retiring:
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.