Falling Asleep

Read 'Falling Asleep' by 'Siegfried Sassoon' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.

Falling Asleep by Siegfried Sassoon

 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 park
A 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 song
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.

Form: Free verse Comments

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