Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Charles Wolfe. 17911823603. The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna
NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note, | |
As his corse to the rampart we hurried; | |
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot | |
O’er the grave where our hero we buried. | |
We buried him darkly at dead of night, | 5 |
The sods with our bayonets turning, | |
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light | |
And the lanthorn dimly burning. | |
No useless coffin enclosed his breast, | |
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; | 10 |
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest | |
With his martial cloak around him. | |
Few and short were the prayers we said, | |
And we spoke not a word of sorrow; | |
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, | 15 |
And we bitterly thought of the morrow. | |
We thought, as we hollow’d his narrow bed | |
And smooth’d down his lonely pillow, | |
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head, | |
And we far away on the billow! | 20 |
Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that ‘s gone, | |
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. | |
But half of our heavy task was done | 25 |
When the clock struck the hour for retiring; | |
And we heard the distant and random gun | |
That the foe was sullenly firing. | |
Slowly and sadly we laid him down, | |
From the field of his fame fresh and gory; | 30 |
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, | |
But we left him alone with his glory. |