Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Belgium: Landen

How Sarsfield Died in Glory

By Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830–1883)

’T WAS in that sad and woful year

Of war and famine, death and fear,

When Ireland lowered her banner spear

On Limerick’s turrets hoary,

We took to ship and sailed the sea

Unto the shore of Normandie,

And then once more our banner free

Flashed to the ray

In many a fray,

And victor saw that bloody day

When Sarsfield died in glory!

The morn rose red on Landen plain,

King William charged o’er heaps of slain,

And Frenchmen’s blood poured out like rain

Upon the field so gory;

To stem his onset vain they tried,

As on he swept in warlike pride,

Till Luxemburg, our marshal, cried,

“New force we want

To bear the brunt,

So bring the Irish to the front!”

Where Sarsfield died in glory.

Then you should hear our slogan roar,

Loud swell the din of battle o’er,

As forward our battalions bore

To change the Frenchman’s story;

Against the foe our strength we threw,

And mixed us in the bloody brew,

While swords and spears in flinders flew,

And grape and shot

And bullets hot

Rained round the crimson, fatal spot

Where Sarsfield died in glory!

There, like the bolt that from on high

Tears roaring through the storm-wracked sky,

And on the trembling ground anigh

In thunder bursts before ye;

So our brave chieftain ’neath the ball,

In thundering clangor met his fall,

But rallying at his dying call,

With deafening shout,

Our foemen stout,

We swept away in bloody rout,

Where Sarsfield died in glory!

His hand upon the wound he pressed,

Sad sinking to his final rest,

Then took it from his gallant breast,

With his hot life-blood gory—

“O, would,” the dying hero cried,

“That this my heart’s ensanguined tide

Had stained some native mountain side

For old Ireland!”

Then dropped his hand,

And midst our tearful, conquering band

Brave Sarsfield died in glory!

Then all good men, where’er you be,

Who fought for Ireland’s liberty,

Our hero brave lament with me,

And ponder well his story;

And pray, like him, that you may die

Beneath old Ireland’s genial sky,

With Saxon dead piled mountains high,

The spot around

Where you have found

The hero’s death on Irish ground

That Sarsfield died in glory!