# The Dream

#### 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.

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