I.
Victor of Assaye’s orient plain;—
Victor of all the fields of Spain;—
Victor of France’s despot reign;—
Thy task of glory done!
Welcome!—from dangers greatly dared;
From triumphs, with the vanquish’d shared;
From nations saved, and nations spared;
Unconquer’d Wellington!—
II.
Unconquer’d! yet thy honours claim
A nobler, than a Conqueror’s, name;—
At the red wreaths of guilty fame
Thy generous soul had blush’d:
The blood—the tears the world has shed—
The throngs of mourners—piles of dead—
The grief—the guilt—are on his head,
The Tyrant thou hast crush’d.
III.
Thine was the sword which Justice draws;
Thine was the pure and generous cause,
Of holy rites and human laws
The impious thrall to burst;
And thou wast destin’d for thy part!
The noblest mind, the firmest heart,
Artless—but in the warrior’s art—
And in that art, the first.
IV.
And WE, who in the eastern skies
Beheld thy Sun of glory rise,
Still follow, with exulting eyes,
His proud Meridian height.
Late,—on thy grateful country’s breast,
Late, may that Sun descend to rest,
Beaming through all the glowing West
The memory of his light.