We buried him darkly; at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning, By the twinkling of the pale starlight, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay--like a warrior taking his rest-- With his martial cloak around him! Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed And smoothed down his lonely pillow, How the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone, And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him; But nothing he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on, In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock toll’d the hour for retiring, And we heard by the outpost signal gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame, fresh and gory; We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him--alone with his glory.”[185] The town of Coruña is built, as we have seen, on a peninsula, upon whose rocky sea-washed point there stands the famous _Tower of Hercules_, a monument of remote antiquity with modern restorations. After bidding adieu to the tomb of Sir John Moore, we told our coachman to drive us to this lighthouse, whose majestic proportions had aroused our admiration as our steamer entered the Coruña harbour. On the way thither we visited the _Campo Santo_, a large cemetery, with many handsome marble monuments. There was a high white wall round the cemetery, and inside it were some tall and leafy eucalyptus trees; on the outer side of the wall there were geranium hedges, six and seven feet high, and in full flower. A priest was standing at the entrance to the cemetery, and seeing that we were foreigners, he kindly volunteered a few explanatory remarks. “Those niches in the catacombs which you see lining the cemetery wall,” he observed, “are the graves of rich people, whose friends can afford to pay a considerable sum for the privilege; the graves you see in the centre, under the grass, are those of poor people, who could not pay for more than the plain ground.” The cemetery was a very large one; it covered the whole hillside and stretched right down to the sea, which formed an azure background to the gleaming white marble. The descending path had handsome monuments on either side of it, all bearing the letters R.I.P.; they were separated from one another by handsome palm trees.