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[Corunna, Spain, January 16, 1809]
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. | |
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| We buried him darkly, at dead of night, | 5 |
| The sods with our bayonets turning; | |
| By the struggling moonbeams’ misty light, | |
| And the lanthorn dimly burning. | |
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| No useless coffin enclosed his breast, | |
| Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; | 10 |
| But he lay, like a warrior taking his rest, | |
| With his martial cloak around him. | |
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| 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, | 15 |
| And we bitterly thought of the morrow. | |
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| 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! | 20 |
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| 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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| But half of our heavy task was done, | 25 |
| When the clock struck the hour for retiring; | |
| And we heard the distant and random gun | |
| That the foe was sullenly firing. | |
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| Slowly and sadly we laid him down, | |
| From the field of his fame fresh and gory; | 30 |
| We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone— | |
| But we left him alone with his glory. | |
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