Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/744

 CHARLES WOLFE 6 10 The Burial of Sir John Moore ajter

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,

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 smoothed 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.

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