This article was first published in The Star on September 1st 2000.

When I drop in on some old body and find him or her a bit low, I find that quoting a verse of an old ballad or poem usually livens them up, wrote Pat Smyth.

In old times, most English lessons at primary school level, or maybe I should say elementary school, consisted of rhyming off poems parrot-wise.

Is there any older reader who hasn't heard of the boy that 'stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled'. 'A creature of heroic mood' in the words of the poet -- a darned fool in the mind of most young cubs of my school.

And what about the 'Burial of Sir John Moore', described by commentators as one of the finest elegiac poems in the English language'.

With that kind of tag it should be worthy of space. Here are a few verses taken at random.

    Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
    As his corpse to the rampart was hurried.
    Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
    O'er the grave where our hero was
    buried.
    We buried him darkly at dead of night
    The sods with our baronets turning.
    But the struggling moonbeam's misty light
    And the lantern dimly burning.
    We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
    And smoothed down his lonely pillow
    That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head
    And we far away on the billow!
    But half of our heavy task was done
    When the clock struck the hour for retiring
    And we heard the distant and random gun
    That the foe was sullenly firing.
    Slowly and sadly we lid him down
    From the field of his fame fresh an gory
    We carved not a line and we raised not a stone
    But we left him alone his glory.

Moore was a British General and Crown Commander who was sent to Ireland to put down the 1798 insurrection. Unlike many of his fellow generals, he won acclaim for the way in which he conducted himself with honour and humanity.

Around 1817, when a young County Kildare man, Charles Wolfe, read a newspaper account of his burial, he was inspired to write the epic poem quoted above.

    Moore was killed at the age of 48 during the Napoleonic wars in a major battle against France at La Coruna in Spain. Lord Byron described 'The Burial of Sir John Moore' as the finest ode in the English Language and is quoted as saying that he wished he had written it.
   
The author, Wolfe, was ordained a minister of the Church of Ireland and appointed curate at Ballyclog, County Tyrone but he died of consumption six years afterwards.

    I have no poetic skills, but I have always found Wolfe's poem real music. The un-rhyming masterpieces of modern poetry do not have the same appeal.

    'By the struggling moon beams, misty light and the lantern dimly burning' takes me back to the nights when I carried a storm lamp around the haggard! (Haggard = stack yard).