English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Thomas Campbell
452. The Soldiers Dream
O
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.