2

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London's central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.

3

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,

Let the long long procession go,

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.

4

Mourn, for to us he seems the last,
Remembering all his greatness in the Past.
No more in soldier fashion 1 will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
O friends, our chief state-oracle 2 is mute :
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,3

1 Soldier fashion.] The Duke's well-known military salute. 2 Chief state-oracle.] In a certain sense this was true. Although the Duke's political career was not that for which he was most distinguished, yet he was the greatest man among the politicians of his day.

3 Clearest of ambitious crime.] The contrast between Wellington and Napoleon in this respect is one of the most marked and instructive in history.

Our greatest yet with least pretence,
Great in council and great in war,
Foremost captain of his time,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.

O good gray head 1 which all men knew,

voice from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve to true occasion true,

O fall'n at length that tower of strength

Which stood four-square 2 to all the winds that blew!

Such was he whom we deplore.

The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.

The great World-victor's victor will be seen no

more.

5

All is over and done:
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son.
Let the bell be toll'd.
Render thanks to the Giver,

And render him to the mould.

Under the cross of gold 3

That shines over city and river,

1 Good gray head.] So Shakespeare, Henry V., IV. 1: "A good soft pillow for that good white head Were better than a churlish turf of France."

2 Tower

...

· four-square.] So Dante, Paradiso, xvii. 24:
"Ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura,"

an idea borrowed from Aristotle.

3 Cross of gold.] That at the top of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

There he shall rest for ever

Among the wise and the bold.

Let the bell be toll'd:

And a reverent people behold
The towering car,1 the sable steeds:
Bright let it be with his blazon'd deeds,

Dark in its funeral fold.

Let the bell be toll'd:

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd;
And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd
Thro' the dome of the golden cross;

And the volleying cannon thunder his loss;
He knew their voices of old.

For many a time in many a clime

His captain's-ear has heard them boom
Bellowing victory, bellowing doom;

When he with those deep voices wrought,
Guarding realms and kings from shame;
With those deep voices our dead captain taught
The tyrant, and asserts his claim

In that dread sound to the great name,
Which he has worn so pure of blame,
In praise and in dispraise the same,
A man of well-attemper'd frame.
O civic muse, to such a name,
To such a name for ages long,
To such a name,

Preserve a broad approach of fame,
And ever-ringing avenues of song.

1 Towering car.] This car, made of the metal of guns captured by the Duke, is still preserved in the crypt of St. Paul's.

6

Who is he1 that cometh, like an honour'd guest, With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest,

With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest? Mighty seaman, this is he

Was great by land as thou by sea.

Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man,
The greatest sailor since our world began.
Now, to the roll of muffled drums,
To thee the greatest soldier comes;
For this is he

Was great by land as thou by sea;
His foes were thine; he kept us free;
O give him welcome, this is he,
Worthy of our gorgeous rites,
And worthy to be laid by thee;
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gain'd a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye 2
Clash'd with his fiery few and won;
And underneath another sun,
Warring on a later day,

Round affrighted Lisbon drew

The treble works, the vast designs

1 Who is he?] This fine address placed in Nelson's mouth recalls the apostrophe in Isa. xiv. 10-16, of the great departed ones of the earth on the king of Babylon's descent into Hades, or Sheol.

2 Assaye.] This battle was fought Sept. 23, 1803, when Arthur Wellesley, at the beginning of his career, at the head of 4500 men, defeated the Mahratta chief, Sindhia, with 30,000 men. Tennyson has selected three typical points in Wellington's history, one from India, another from the Peninsula, and the third, Waterloo.

Of his labour'd rampart-lines,1
Where he greatly stood at bay,
Whence he issued forth anew,
And ever great and greater grew,
Beating from the wasted vines 2
Back to France 3 her banded swarms,
Back to France with countless blows,
Till o'er the hills her eagles 4 flew
Past the Pyrenean pines,

1 Treble works rampart-lines.] Three lines of earthworks thrown up by Wellington, between the Tagus and the sea, to hinder the advance of Napoleon's general, Massena; by means of which he starved out the French army, which had been much more numerous than his own; and Massena had eventually to retreat, till by the spring of 1811 not a single Frenchman remained in Portugal. This will always be remembered as one of the "Iron Duke's" greatest strategical triumphs.

2 Wasted vines.] The devastation of the Peninsula by the French armies is dwelt on by all contemporary historians. Of the brutalities which accompanied Massena's progress one instance will suffice. "There was a church opposite his own quarters in Santarem (near Torres Vedras) in which a number of children, whose parents had been murdered by the French, had got together.. Many of them had literally died with hunger under Massena's eyes; and when the English entered the town immediately upon his retreat, they found the floor of the church strewn with the dead or living skeletons of these poor innocents. The first thought of the British soldiers was to give them their own rations, but most of them were too far gone, and expired with the bread beside them which British humanity had held to their lips. . . . Massena's conduct in this retreat was marked by the most wanton destruction and the most systematic cruelty, by a 'barbarity,' says Lord Wellington, 'seldom equalled, and never surpassed.' The church and

convent at Alcobaça, the value of which may be expressed to an English reader, by saying that they were to the Portuguese what Westminster Abbey and the Bodleian are to the history and literature of England, were burnt by orders from the French headquarters" (Quarterly Review for April 1815 (three months before Waterloo), p. 261).

8 Back to France.] Wellington's last Peninsular victory, "having beaten the French from the mouth of the Tagus to the Garonne, was that over Soult before Toulouse, when, anxious to avoid all further bloodshed, he permitted him and his troops to file off under the cannon of the victorious army" (Q. R., p. 271).

4 Eagles.] The well-known standards of Napoleon. "It has been a matter of surprise to some," says a contemporary writer, "that more eagles were not taken [at Waterloo]-the reasons are, first, that the number of eagles is very small; each regiment has but one eagle, though it has four battalions, so that in our army there are eight colours for the same number of men to whom one