Voices moving about in the quiet house: <br />Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: <br />Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert. <br /> <br />Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom <br />Crowded with whispering trees; across the park <br />A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: <br />And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon; <br />The low, red, rising moon. Now herons call <br />And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls <br />Sail from the wood above pale stooks of oats. <br /> <br />Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these; <br />And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams. <br />Music ... there was a bright white room below, <br />And someone singing a song about a soldier, <br />One hour, two hours ago: and soon the song <br />Will be ‘last night’: but now the beauty swings <br />Across my brain, ghost of remembered chords <br />Which still can make such radiance in my dream <br />That I can watch the marching of my soldiers, <br />And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces. <br /> <br />Falling asleep ... the herons, and the hounds.... <br />September in the darkness; and the world <br />I’ve known; all fading past me into peace.<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/falling-asleep/
