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Reading @NH Civil War Gal 's recent thread "What Would a Wounded Soldier Dream About" reminded me of this poem, "The Soldier's Dream," written by Thomas Campbell and published in The Southern Flag Song Book in 1863. This one is kind of the opposite of the dream described in @NH Civil War Gal 's thread experienced by Charles Johnson after his wounding. Instead of dreaming about demons, rattle snakes, hell and brimstone like Johnson did, Campbell describes a vivid dream of home and family. It seems though that the opinions expressed by @bayonet @Lubliner @lurid and @Woods-walker in the other thread still apply here.
THE SOLDIER'S DREAM
by Thomas Campbell
Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd
And the sentinel-stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd
The weary to sleep and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Me thought from the battle-field's dreadful array
Far, far I had roam'd on a desolate track;
It was autumn, and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers that welcomed me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life's morning march when my bosom was young
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,
And I knew the sweet song that the corn-reapers sung.
Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness [sic] of heart.
"Stay, stay with us! Rest! Thou art weary and worn,"
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;
But Sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away!
Sources
Image: Harper's Weekly, November 7, 1863, page 709.
Poem: The Southern Flag and Song Book, H.C. Clarke, bookseller and publisher, Vicksburg, MS and Augusta, GA, 1863, pp. 24-25.