THE MUFFLED DRUM.
81
The oaks of England wav'd
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,
With a dull deep rolling sound
Which call'd strange echoes round
To the soldier's burial rite.
Brief was the sorrowing there,
By the stream from battle red,
And tossing on its wave the plumes
Of many a stately head;
But a mother—soon to die,
And a sister—long to weep,
Ev'n then were breathing prayer for him,
In that home beyond the deep:
G
