Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.

These lines are from Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem *The Lady of the Lake* (1810). They appear as part of a funeral dirge sung over the fallen Highland warrior (often identified in the poem as the “Soldier”) after the battle at Beal’ an Duine. Scott, writing at the height of Romantic-era interest in Scotland’s past, uses the dirge to give a solemn, ceremonial close to the warrior’s life, contrasting the noise and strain of combat with the finality of death’s “rest.” The stanza became widely excerpted in the 19th century for memorial and military contexts.

The dirge frames death as the ultimate cessation of struggle: “warfare o’er” and a sleep “that knows not breaking” suggest an irreversible peace after a life of vigilance. The imagery rejects heroic glamor in favor of release—no more “battled fields,” no more “nights of waking.” At the same time, the address “Soldier” dignifies the dead by naming his identity and duty, implying that the hardships of service have earned repose. In Scott’s Romantic mode, the lines also ritualize communal remembrance: the living speak to the dead, transforming private loss into a public, almost liturgical act of honor.