No hired mourners wave the sabled plume,
No statues rise to mark the sacred spot,
No pealing organ swells the solemn note.
A hurried grave thy soldiers’ hands prepare;
Thy soldiers’ hands the mournful burthen bear;
The vaulted sky to earth’s extremest verge
Thy canopy; the cannon’s roar thy dirge!
Affections sorrows dew thy lowly bier,
And weeping Valour sanctifies the tear.”
This, as we have shown, was written in 1809. On April 19, 1817, eight years later, there appeared in the Newry Telegraph (a small tri-weekly, published in Ulster), under the simple head of “Poetry,” what Byron called “the most perfect ode in the language”—“The Burial of Sir John Moore.” This poem was variously ascribed to Byron, Campbell and a number of others, and it was not until the year 1823 that it became known that the real author was the late Rev. Charles Wolfe, the curate of Ballyclog, in Tyrone, who had just died of consumption at the early age of thirty-two. Under ordinary circumstances there could be nothing remarkable in the fact of a notable occurrence, such as the burial of a nation’s hero, inspiring two poets, at different dates, to choose it as a theme. In this case it is, however, very singular that the hurried, rough burial of the hero should have resulted in phrases almost identical in thought if not in word, especially as it was almost impossible for Mr. Wolfe to have seen Miss Mitford’s work. As a literary curiosity we subjoin the verses of Mr. Wolfe to which we refer:—