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1

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

The exact date at which the poem was written has never been precisely fixed. But it must have been composed considerably earlier than the date—Sept. 6, 1816— of the copy in the poet's handwriting reproduced in this volume by permission of the Royal Irish Academy. A letter printed by Archdeacon Russell in a note to the ninth edition of the Remains (p. 20) gives the approximate date. Wolfe's college friend Charles Dickinson, Bishop of Meath, writing on Aug. 28, 1841, then stated as follows:—“I distinctly remember that I read to Hercules Graves, Charles Wolfe's poem on Sir John Moore—in my rooms No. 5 in college. This must have been between March 21, 1812, and December 23, 1815; for it was during that time that I resided in those rooms.”

I

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.

II

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

III

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.

IV

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we stead fastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
2

V

We thought, as we hollowed 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!

VI

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.

VII

But half of our heavy task was done,
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

VIII

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!
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