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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Hastings

Hastings

By Edward, Lord Thurlow (1781–1829)

O MOON, that shinest on this heathy wild

And light’st the hill of Hastings with thy ray,

How am I with thy sad delight beguiled,

How hold with fond imagination play!

By thy broad taper I call up the time

When Harold on the bleeding verdure lay,

Though great in glory, overstained with crime,

And fallen by his fate from kingly sway!

On bleeding knights, and on war-broken arms,

Torn banners, and the dying steeds you shone,

When this fair England and her peerless charms,

And all but honor, to the foe were gone!

Here died the king, whom his brave subjects chose,

But, dying, lay amid his Norman foes.