SANTA FILOMENA.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12587, 17 August 1910, Page 5

SANTA FILOMENA.

Honour to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overow - liaise us from wha is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read Or the gneiat army of tlte dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,

The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, Tho cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp T 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, Tho vision came and went, The light shone and wasspent

On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shaH cast From portals of the pact.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noblo type of good Heroic womanhood.

—Longfellow