THE SOLDIERS DREAM
Our bugle sung truse while the night cloud did lower
And the sentinel stare fixed his watch in the skies
And thousands had sunk on the ground to repose.
The weary to wrest and the wounded to die
Reposing at night on my pallet of straw
By wolfs glasing fuggot that guarded the slain
At the dead of night a sweet vision I saw
And thrice afore the morning I dreamed it again
Me thought from the battle field's dreadful array
Far, far I had romed o'er a desolate track
It was autumn and sunshine that rose on the way
To the home of my fathers that welcomed me back
I flew through the pleasant fields that I so oft traversed
In lifes early march when my bosom was young
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft
and knew the sweet songs which the corn reapers sung
Then pledged we the wine cup and fondly we swore
From our homes and our little ones never to part
My little ones kissed me a thousand times over
And my wife sobed aloud in the fullness of heart
Stay, stay O, rest, thy art weary and worn
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn
And the voices of my dreaming had melted away.
Presented to my wife, Margaret Jane Raney
After the battle of Chicasaw near Vicksburg, Miss. on
December 27, 1862. By Eli N. Raney; husband
This April 27, 1863 Vb. Miss
Eli N. Raney served in Co. I of the 1st Mississippi Artillery. He enlisted on May 3rd, 1862 at Yazoo City, Mississippi and the last date of documented service was July 7th, 1863. He was born in Alabama in 1830 and was the brother of Mary H. Rainey Russell 1833-1876.
The Soldiers Dream was written by Thomas Campbell, a Scottish Poet (1777-1844)