stoutfellow | Laziness

I meant to do quite a bit this long weekend.

You know how that song ends, don't you?

I do have a couple of LJ posts - one on over-powered heroes, one on Skowronek - percolating, but they haven't gelled yet.

Lest the weekend go by without anything of substance, though, here's a poem by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844); it's not quite a Memorial Day poem, but it still seems apropos to me.

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 faggot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw;
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array
Far, far had I roam'd on a desolate track:
'Twas 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 knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my house and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fullness 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.

Laziness

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