The Muffled Drum. Felicia Hemans (1793-1835). Spain: Corunna (La Coruna). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. 1876-79. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes. Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV-XV

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Spain: Corunna (La Coruña)

The Muffled Drum

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)


THE MUFFLED drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
Which told the hamlets round
Of a soldier’s burial rite.	5

But it told them not how dear,
In a home beyond the main,
Was the warrior youth laid low that hour
By a mountain stream of Spain.

The oaks of England waved	10
O’er the slumbers of his race,
But a pine of the Ronceval made moan
Above his last, lone place;

When the muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,	15
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
Which called strange echoes round
To the soldier’s burial rite.

Brief was the sorrowing there,
By the stream from battle red,	20
And tossing on its wave the plumes
Of many a stately head;

But a mother—soon to die—
And a sister—long to weep—
Even then were breathing prayers for him	25
In that home beyond the deep;

While the muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
And the dark pines mourned around	30
O’er the soldier’s burial rite.