_'Tis night_;--and glittering o'er the trampled heath, Pale gleams the moonlight on the field of death; Lights up each well-known spot, where late in blood, The vanquished yielded, and the victor stood; When red in clouds the sun of battle rode, And poured on Britain's front its favoring flood. LORD GRENVILLE.
Again the summer moon rose brightly over the secluded village of Steinkirke, and poured its cold and steady lustre on cornfields drenched in blood, and trod to gory mire by the charge of the spurred squadrons, the closer movements of the compact squares of infantry, or the artillery's track; on the pale and upturned faces of the dying, the distorted and ghastlier lineaments of the dead,--on a wide battle-field strewn with all the trophies of war and destruction,--misery and agony.
Save where illumined by the gleams of moonlight, by the red flashes of a few distant fire-arms, and the redder glare from a convent burned by the retreating British, the ruddy conflagration of which mingled with the last faint glow of the departed sun, the field seemed gloomy and dark. A narrow lurid streak at the distant horizon shewed where the sun had set. The roar of that great battle had now died away, but it had sent forth an echo over France and Britain denoting joy to one and sorrow to the other. Where, then, was William of Orange, and where his mighty host?
The contest was now over, and, save the distant popping of a few skirmishers or plunderers, every sound of strife had ceased; but the cool night wind was laden with a sad and wailing murmur, a sound which it is seldom the lot of man to hear--the mingled moans of many thousands of men enduring all the complicated torture of sabre and gunshot wounds and the most excruciating thirst. Many a solemn prayer and pious ejaculation of deep contrition, uttered in many a varied tongue, were then ascending from that moonlit battlefield to the throne of God, while others in their ravings called only on Death to ease them of their torments; and long ere sunrise the stern king of terrors attended the summons of many.
A great cannon royal, drawn by eight horses and escorted by the artillerists of the Brigade de Dauphine, passed near the corpse-heaped abbatis where Walter Fenton lay, and he implored them to remove him from the field. They were passing him unheeded, when one exclaimed,
