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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  For the Walls of Ciudad Rodrigo

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Spain: Ciudad Rodrigo

For the Walls of Ciudad Rodrigo

By Robert Southey (1774–1843)

HERE Craufurd fell, victorious, in the breach,

Leading his countrymen in that assault

Which won from haughty France these rescued walls;

And here entombed, far from his native land

And kindred dust, his honored relics rest.

Well was he versed in war, in the Orient trained

Beneath Cornwallis; then, for many a year,

Following through arduous and ill-fated fields

The Austrian banners; on the sea-like shores

Of Plata next, still by malignant stars

Pursued; and in that miserable retreat,

For which Coruña witnessed on her hills

The pledge of vengeance given. At length he saw,

Long wooed and well deserved, the brighter face

Of Fortune, upon Coa’s banks vouchsafed,

Before Almeida, when Massena found

The fourfold vantage of his numbers foiled,

Before the Briton and the Portugal,

There vindicating first his old renown,

And Craufurd’s mind that day presiding there.

Again was her auspicious countenance

Upon Busaco’s holy heights revealed;

And when by Torres Vedras, Wellington,

Wisely secure, defied the boastful French,

With all their power; and when Onoro’s springs

Beheld that execrable enemy

Again chastised beneath the avenging arm.

Too early here his honorable course

He closed, and won his noble sepulchre.

Where should the soldier rest so worthily

As where he fell? Be thou his monument,

O City of Rodrigo! yea, be thou,

To latest time, his trophy and his tomb!

Sultans, or Pharaohs of the elder world,

Lie not in mosque or pyramid enshrined

Thus gloriously, nor in so proud a grave.