The Soldier’s Dream

by Thomas Campbell

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.