LINES ON THE BURIAL OF A BRITISH PROTESTANT IN SPAIN.
Not a knell gave out any funeral note,
As his corpse to the shingles we hurried;
And below water-mark we had bare leave got
That our countryman's bones should be buried.
We buried him, dog-like, on that mean site,
The tide on the point of turning,
At the wretched Spaniards' bigot spite
With contempt intensely burning.
No use in coffin enclosing his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud that bound him!
For he lay where he scarce would remain long at rest,
With the ocean washing round him.
None at all were the prayers we read;
And we felt more of rage than sorrow,
As we thought on the brutes who insult us when dead,
And don't pay us alive what they borrow
We thought as we hollowed his shelly bed,
And smoothed down his pebbly pillow,
That the crabs and the lobsters would creep o'er his head,
And we with our fleets on the billow!
Lightly they'll talk of our spirit as gone!
Our guns might to atoms have brayed them,
Yet we've let the rascals in this way go on,
Treating those very Britons who made them.
But half of our shameful job was done,
When the waves roared the hour of retiring,
And we knew we the distance should have to run,
To divert a rabble admiring.
Sharply and quickly we laid him down,
'Mid the jeers of the monks, young and hoary,
And we said, unless Spain is compelled to atone,
All a humbug is Old England's glory!