page: 149
SAINT FILOMENA.
From the Atlantic Monthly.
- Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,
- Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,
- Our hearts, in glad surprise,
- To higher levels rise.
- The tidal wave of deeper souls
- Into our inmost being rolls,
- And lifts us unawares
- Out of all meaner cares.
- Honour to those whose words or deeds
- Thus help us in our daily needs,
- And by their overflow
- Raise us from what is low!
- Thus thought I, as by night I read
- Of the great army of the dead,
- The trenches cold and damp,
- The starved and frozen camp—
- The wounded from the battle‐plain,
- In dreary hospitals of pain,
- The cheerless corridors,
- The cold and stony floors.
- Lo! in that house of misery
- A lady with a lamp I see
- Pass through the glimmering gloom,
- And flit from room to room.
- And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
- The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
- Her shadow, as it falls
- Upon the darkening walls.
- As if a door in heaven should be
- Opened, and then closed suddenly,
- The vision came and went,
- The light shone and was spent.
- On England’s annals, through the long
- Hereafter of her speech and song,
- That light its rays shall cast
- From portals of the past.
- A lady with a lamp shall stand
- In the great history of the land,
- A noble type of good,
- Heroic womanhood.
- Nor even shall be wanting here
- The palm, the lily and the spear,
- The symbols that of yore
- Saint FILOMENA bore.
