Chapter XXIII

Farewell, sad Field! whose blighted face
Wears desolation’s withering trace;
Long shall my memory retain
Thy shatter’d huts and trampled grain,
With every mark of martial wrong,
That scathe thy towers, fair Hougomont!
Yet though thy garden’s green arcade
The marksman’s fatal post was made,
Though on thy shatter’d beeches fell
The blended rage of shot and shell,
Though from thy blacken’d portals torn
Their fall thy blighted fruit-trees mourn,
Has not such havock bought a name
Immortal in the rolls of fame?
Yes--Agincourt may be forgot,
And Cressy be an unknown spot,
And Blenheim’s name be new;
But still in story and in song,
For many an age remember’d long,
Shall live the towers of Hougomont,
And fields of Waterloo.