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 parkA 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

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.