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Siegfried Sassoon - The Dream
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I

Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent   
Of summer gardens; these can bring you all   
Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:   
Sweet songs are full of odours. 
                                While I went   
Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden   
Came the rank smell that brought me once again   
A dream of war that in the past was hidden.   
   
II

Up a disconsolate straggling village street   
I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet   
And guide our Company in… 
                            I watched them stumble   
Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;   
Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs   
Rifles, equipment, packs.
On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face   
Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,   
While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.   
   
III

I’m looking at their blistered feet; young Jones   
Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded; 
Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.   
Old soldiers with three winters in their bones   
Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes:   
They can still grin at me, for each of ’em knows   
That I’m as tired as they are… 
                                  Can they guess
The secret burden that is always mine?—   
Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;   
And burning bitterness   
That I must take them to the accursèd Line.   
   
IV

I cannot hear their voices, but I see
Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,   
And soon they’ll sleep like logs. Ten miles away   
The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.   
And I must lead them nearer, day by day,   
To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.
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