I picture her there in the quaint old room, <br />Where the fading fire-light starts and falls, <br />Alone in the twilight's tender gloom <br />With the shadows that dance on the dim-lit walls. <br /> <br />Alone, while those faces look silently down <br />From their antique frames in a grim repose- <br />Slight scholarly Ralph in his Oxford gown, <br />And stanch Sir Alan, who died for Montrose. <br /> <br />There are gallants gay in crimson and gold, <br />There are smiling beauties with powdered hair, <br />But she sits there, fairer a thousand-fold, <br />Leaning dreamily back in her low arm-chair. <br /> <br />And the roseate shadows of fading light <br />Softly clear, steal over the sweet young face, <br />Where a woman's tenderness blends to-night <br />With the guileless pride of a knightly race. <br /> <br />Her hands lie clasped in a listless way <br />On the old Romance-which she holds on her knee- <br />Of Tristram, the bravest of knights in the fray, <br />And Iseult, who waits by the sounding sea. <br /> <br />And her proud, dark eyes wear a softened look, <br />As she watches the dying embers fall: <br />Perhaps she dreams of the knight in the book, <br />Perhaps of the pictures that smile on the wall. <br /> <br />What fancies, I wonder, are thronging her brain, <br />For her cheeks flush warm with a crimson glow! <br />Perhaps-ah! me, how foolish and vain! <br />But I'd give my life to believe it so. <br /> <br />Well, whether I ever march home again <br />To offer my love and a stainless name, <br />Or whether I die at the head of my men, <br />I'll be true to the end all the same.<br /><br />William Gordon McCabe<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dreaming-in-the-trenches/
