THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AFTER CORUNNA
by: Charles Wolfe (1791-1823)
- OT 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,
- 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;
- 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,
- 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!
-
- 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
- When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
- And we heard the distant and random gun
- The the foe was sullenly firing.
-
- Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
- 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.
MORE
POEMS BY CHARLES WOLFE |
|