452. The Soldier’s Dream

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.