Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Portugal: Busaco | | Inscription for the Deserto de Busaco | | Robert Southey (1774–1843) |
| | | READER! thou standest upon holy ground, | |
| Which Penitence hath chosen for itself, | |
| And war, disturbing the deep solitude, | |
| Hath left it doubly sacred. On these heights | |
| The host of Portugal and England stood, | 5 |
| Arrayed against Massena, when the chief, | |
| Proud of Rodrigo and Almeida won, | |
| Pressed forward, thinking the devoted realm | |
| Full sure should fall a prey. He in his pride | |
| Scorned the poor numbers of the English foe, | 10 |
| And thought the children of the land would fly | |
| From his advance, like sheep before the wolf, | |
| Scattering, and lost in terror. Ill he knew | |
| The Lusitanian spirit! Ill he knew | |
| The arm, the heart, of England! Ill he knew | 15 |
| Her Wellington! He learnt to know them here, | |
| That spirit and that arm, that heart, that mind, | |
| Here on Busaco gloriously displayed, | |
| When, hence repulsed, the beaten boaster wound | |
| Below his course circuitous, and left | 20 |
| His thousands for the beasts and ravenous fowl. | |
| The Carmelite who in his cell recluse | |
| Was wont to sit, and from a skull receive | |
| Death’s silent lesson, wheresoe’er he walk, | |
| Henceforth may find his teachers. He shall find | 25 |
| The Frenchmen’s bones in glen and grove, on rock | |
| And height, where’er the wolves and carrion birds | |
| Have strewn them, washed in torrents, bare and bleached | |
| By sun and rain, and by the winds of heaven. | | | | |
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