The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna, penned by Charles Wolfe "Not a drum was heard, nor 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 lanthorn 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. " I was rather taken with this, it was included in an article in todays Times written by David Sharrock in which he describes Moore's stand at Corunna with 30,000 British troops outnumbered 10-1 by the mighty army of Napoleon. This from the closing paragraph of Sharrock's piece................. "History is still very raw around here; in the city of Vigo they still burn effigies of the French every year".