Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Composite volume > Ballad poetry of Ireland

OF IRELAND. |0\
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 strugghng moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or 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 hoUow'd his narrow bed.
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow.
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his bead
And we far away on the biUow !
Lightly they '11 talk of the spirit that 's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, —
But little he '11 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 we left him alone with his glory !
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