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Home  »  Picture-Show  »  33. Falling Asleep

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Picture-Show. 1920.

33. Falling Asleep

VOICES moving about in the quiet house:

Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:

Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert.

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom

Crowded with whispering trees; across the park

A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:

And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon;

The low, red, rising moon. Now herons call

And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls

Sail from the wood above pale stooks of oats.

Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;

And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams.

Music … there was a bright white room below,

And someone singing a song about a soldier,

One hour, two hours ago: and soon the song

Will be ‘last night’: but now the beauty swings

Across my brain, ghost of remembered chords

Which still can make such radiance in my dream

That I can watch the marching of my soldiers,

And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces.

Falling asleep … the herons, and the hounds.…

September in the darkness; and the world

I’ve known; all fading past me into peace.