452. The Soldier’s Dream

Thomas Campbell (1777—1844)

  OUR bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower’d,

  And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;

  And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower’d;

  The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

  When reposing that night on my pallet of straw

  By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,

  At the dead of the night a sweet Vision I saw;

  And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

  Methought from the battle-field’s dreadful array

  Far, far, I had roam’d on a desolate track:

  ’Twas Autumn,—and sunshine arose on the way

  To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

  I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

  In life’s morning march, when my bosom was young;

  I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

  And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

  Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore

  From my home and my weeping friends never to part;

  My little ones kiss’d me a thousand times o’er,

  And my wife sobb’d aloud in her fulness of heart.

  ‘Stay—stay with us!—rest!—thou art weary and worn!’—

  And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;—

  But sorrow return’d with the dawning of morn,

  And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.