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Where morning ever loveliest shone
In thy blue depths, Morwynion!
It was a sadly glorious sight—
As one by one the warriors past
All tremblingly—all sternly bright
An image on the lake was cast—
And horse and horseman glimmered red,
Like passing phantoms of the dead,
As if that mirror of the morning
Were rife with signs of grief and warning!—
Gorgeous shapes, sublime array,
Youth—hope—valour, where are they
That at dawn united shone
On thy banks, Morwynion?
Ask the vision of the night
Whither it has ta’en its flight—
Ask the shadow where it flies
When the sunbeam quits the skies—
Ask the rent sepulchral stone
For the epitaph that’s flown—
Ask not from the dead
Where the pride of life is fled!—
Nobler than life’s power or pride
Is the death that they have died!
Not a rank and not a man
Have retreated back a span
Since the crash of war began;
There they rest in goodly rows—
All unbroken by their foes,
Like the clouds at ev’ning’s close,
Like the surges of the sea,
Graceful, wild, yet orderly!