A SOLDIER'S DREAM
Anonymous

	Last night as I toasted
	My wet feet and roasted
A small bit of beef by a similar blaze,
	While nought but the wheezings,
	The snorings, and sneezings
Of comrades grouping in Dreamland's haze
	Disturbed the fine vision --
	The picture Elysian --
That Fancy's weird wand conjured up to my thought,
	As she stood like a spooke,
	In a garb of blue smoke,
And amid the hot embers her wonders she wrought.

	Adown a highway
	We were marching so gay
An army with banners bedecked o'er and o'er
	With the brightest garlands
	Wove by fairest of hands,
While a flaming bouquet stuck in each musket bore.
	Each triumphal arch
	It met on the march
Was blazoned with "Peace"; "Welcome home each loved one";
		While maid, wife, and mother
		Would with rapture discover
And rush out to meet lover, husband, and son!

	I forgot all my sore toes --
	Nay, all of my woes --
As I sprang to the threshold and clasped her dear waist;
	And every campaign
	I'd gone over again
To get from those ripe lips another such taste.
	But as I flew to her
	I dropped my fine skewer,
And with it my supper. I mastered my grief
	As the vanishing vision
	of joy's Elysian,
But I couldn't get over the loss of the beef!

Soldier Life

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Last modified 18-April-2001