<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="" class="head">The Dreams</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line"><span class="smallcaps">When</span> I am sleeping I go in dreams</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Far from the children and the man beside,</p><p class="line">I meet with the dead and talk, nor strange it seems,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Since I've forgotten that they ever died.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">They come in so quietly, the loved and lost.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">There is so much to say in a short while.</p><p class="line">Nowise strange it is that a dear ghost</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Should be as the living and be glad and smile.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">In the old garden we go hand in hand.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">When friends are long parted there is much to say,</p><p class="line">Much to be explaining and to understand.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">We walk in old gardens in a long-dead May.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Breasting the hill we go we skirt the wheat,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">By houses and gardens that once I knew.</p><p class="line">All too fast the time goes when old friends meet.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Sure, I was starved for you, and you, and you!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Was I forgetting, then, the patient dead?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Mercy of mercies that in dreams they live!</p><p class="line">They come seeking and finding me upon my bed.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">In dreams they comfort me, in dreams forgive.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">They come to me in my dreams, not cold and lone.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Oh, never sad ghosts they come to fret my sleep,</p><p class="line">But just as I knew them in the days long gone.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">When I wake from my dreams I wake to weep.</p></div></body></html> · Great War