Dealt them such death blow as he fell,
Neither was left the tale to tell;
With dying eyes that asked no grace,
They stared on him for a minute's space,
And felt that it was not Monmouth's face.
Crimsoned through was Monmouth's cloak, when the soldier dropped at their side—
"Those knaves will carry no word," he said, and he smiled in his pain, and died.
"Two days," told the messenger, "did we lie
Hid in the fields of peas and rye,
Hid in the ditch of brake and sedge,
With the enemy's scouts down every hedge,
Till Grey was seized, and Monmouth seized, that under the fern did crouch,
Starved and haggard, and all unshaved, with a few raw peas in his pouch."
No music soundeth in my ears, but a passing bell that tolls
For gallant lords with head on block—sweet Heaven receive their souls!
And a mound, unnamed, in Sedgemoor grass,
That laps my soldier son, alas!
The bloom is shed—
The bees are fled—
Middleton luck it's done and dead.
