MOORE
No. Let it be! One hurt more matters not.
I wish it to go off the field with me.
HARDINGE
I like the sound of that. It augurs well
For your much-hoped recovery.
MOORE [looking sadly at his wound]
Hardinge, no:
Nature is nonplussed there! My shoulder’s gone,
And this left side laid open to my lungs.
There’s but a brief breath now for me, at most....
Could you—move me along—that I may glimpse
Still how the battle’s going?
HARDINGE
Ay, Sir John—
A few yard higher up, where we can see.
[He is borne in the blanket a little way onward, and lifted so
that he can view the valley and the action.]
MOORE [brightly]
They seem to be advancing. Yes, it is so!
[Enter SIR JOHN HOPE.]
Ah, Hope!—I am doing badly here enough;
But they are doing rarely well out there. [Presses HOPE’S hand.]
Don’t leave! my speech may flag with this fierce pain,
But you can talk to me.—Are the French checked?
HOPE
My dear friend, they are borne back steadily.
MOORE [his voice weakening]
I hope England—will be satisfied—
I hope my native land—will do me justice!...
I shall be blamed for sending Craufurd off
Along the Orense road. But had I not,
Bonaparte would have headed us that way....
HOPE
O would that Soult had but accepted battle
By Lugo town! We should have crushed him there.
MOORE
Yes... yes.—But it has never been my lot
To owe much to good luck; nor was it then.
Good fortune has been mine, but [bitterly] mostly so
By the exhaustion of all shapes of bad!...
Well, this does not become a dying man;
And others have been chastened more than I
By Him who holds us in His hollowed hand!...
I grieve for Zaragoza, if, as said,
The siege goes sorely with her, which it must.
I heard when at Dahagun that late day
That she was holding out heroically.
But I must leave such now.—You’ll see my friends
As early as you can? Tell them the whole;
Say to my mother.... [His voice fails.]
Hope, Hope, I have so much to charge you with,
But weakness clams my tongue!... If I must die
Without a word with Stanhope, ask him, Hope,
To—name me to his sister. You may know
Of what there was between us?...
Is Colonel Graham well, and all my aides?
My will I have made—it is in Colborne’s charge
With other papers.
HOPE
He’s now coming up.
[Enter MAJOR COLBORNE, principal aide-de-camp.]