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

Spain: Corunna (La Coruña)

The Muffled Drum

By Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)

THE MUFFLED drum was heard

In the Pyrenees by night,

With a dull, deep rolling sound,

Which told the hamlets round

Of a soldier’s burial rite.

But it told them not how dear,

In a home beyond the main,

Was the warrior youth laid low that hour

By a mountain stream of Spain.

The oaks of England waved

O’er the slumbers of his race,

But a pine of the Ronceval made moan

Above his last, lone place;

When the muffled drum was heard

In the Pyrenees by night,

With a dull, deep rolling sound,

Which called strange echoes round

To the soldier’s burial rite.

Brief was the sorrowing there,

By the stream from battle red,

And tossing on its wave the plumes

Of many a stately head;

But a mother—soon to die—

And a sister—long to weep—

Even then were breathing prayers for him

In that home beyond the deep;

While the muffled drum was heard

In the Pyrenees by night,

With a dull, deep rolling sound,

And the dark pines mourned around

O’er the soldier’s burial rite.