Wordsworth to Dobell

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ...by one of his early friends to collect what he had written. Only twelve short pieces, besides the ode, could be discovered; they were mostly songs of love and friendship, full of ardour, and not uninfluenced by the popular Irish manner of Moore. We give one of these, as a favourable specimen of Wolfe's ordinary style. EDMUND W. GOSSE. ' It has been usually said that VVolfe paraphrased very closely the report of the death of Sir john Moore in the Edinburgh Annual Register for I808. A reference to the report in question relegates this statement to the province of fable; the newspaper account is quite bald and commonplace, and the poet has supplied all the salient points out of his own imagination. 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. Ve buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless cofl'in enclosed his breast, Not 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 stedfastly 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 gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, -But little he'll reek, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our weary task was done When the...