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Siegfried Sassoon - Break Of DaySiegfried Sassoon - Break Of Day
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There seemed a smell of autumn in the air  At the bleak end of night; he shivered there  In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,  Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay  Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,  Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in  Under the freedom of that morning sky!’  And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.    Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell Of underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind,  That sent a happy dream to him in hell?—  Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find  Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie  In outcast immolation, doomed to die Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,  Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims  And roars into their heads, and they can hear  Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.    He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts), He’s riding in a dusty Sussex lane  In quiet September; slowly night departs;  And he’s a living soul, absolved from pain.  Beyond the brambled fences where he goes  Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves, And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;  Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;  And there’s a wall of mist along the vale  Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves,  He gazes on it all, and scarce believes That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;  He thanks the blessed world that he was born…  Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.    They’re drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,  And set Golumpus going on the grass; He knows the corner where it’s best to wait  And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;  The corner where old foxes make their track  To the Long Spinney; that’s the place to be.  The bracken shakes below an ivied tree, And then a cub looks out; and ‘Tally-o-back!’  He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,—  All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,  And hunting surging through him like a flood  In joyous welcome from the untroubled past; While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.    Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim  Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,  And the kind, simple country shines revealed  In solitudes of peace, no longer dim. The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,  Then stretches down his head to crop the green.  All things that he has loved are in his sight;  The places where his happiness has been  Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.           . Hark! there’s the horn: they’re drawing the Big Wood.
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