I <br /> <br />Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent <br />Of summer gardens; these can bring you all <br />Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall: <br />Sweet songs are full of odours. <br />While I went <br />Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane, <br />I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden <br />Came the rank smell that brought me once again <br />A dream of war that in the past was hidden. <br /> <br />II <br /> <br />Up a disconsolate straggling village street <br />I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet. <br />The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet <br />And guide our Company in... <br />I watched them stumble <br />Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble; <br />Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs <br />Rifles, equipment, packs. <br />On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face <br />Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace, <br />While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks. <br /> <br />III <br /> <br />I’m looking at their blistered feet; young Jones <br />Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded; <br />Out of his eyes the morning light has faded. <br />Old soldiers with three winters in their bones <br />Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes: <br />They can still grin at me, for each of ’em knows <br />That I’m as tired as they are... <br />Can they guess <br />The secret burden that is always mine?— <br />Pride in their courage; pity for their distress; <br />And burning bitterness <br />That I must take them to the accursèd Line. <br /> <br />IV <br /> <br />I cannot hear their voices, but I see <br />Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea, <br />And soon they’ll sleep like logs. Ten miles away <br />The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife. <br />And I must lead them nearer, day by day, <br />To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dream-6/
