BEARING WITNESS TO OUR ANCESTORS

HERE IS A POEM THAT REMEMBERS THE BELOVED DEAD.  IT IS  A SOLDIER'S STORY AND WAS ONE THAT WE MEMORIZED IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL.  I LOVED THE LAST LINE.

The poet Robert Southey wrote an account of the battle and the burial events. His account was read by Charles Wolfe, a young country parson at a place named Donaghmore, in Ireland. Wolfe then wrote this poem, in 1814, when he was 22 years old.

The poem was published in a provincial Irish newspaper three years later. Lord Byron discovered it five years after that, admired it tremendously, but did not know who had written it.

Wolfe was not conclusively identified as the author until after his death from TB in 1823, at age 31.

The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna (1817) Charles Wolfe Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Links On 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 lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor 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 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! 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  That 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 left him alone with his glory.