Santa Filomena
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When e’er a noble deed is wrought,
When e’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 the 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 FilomenaC bore.
Footnotes
C In her “Sacred and Legendary Art,” Mrs. Jamieson writes that “at Pisa the Church of San Francesco contained a chapel dedicated to Santa Filomena; over the altar is a picture by Sabatelli, representing the saint as a beautiful nymph-like figure floating down from heaven, attended by two angels, bearing the lily, palm, and javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and maimed who are healed by her intercession.”
Longfellow gave the name Filomena to Florence Nightingale partly because of her labours among the sick and dying at Scutari, and partly on account of the resemblance between Filomena and the Latin Philomela (nightingale).—Brewer.
Readers should note that in the Chapter on Catherine Douglas, pp. 101-131, the spelling ‘Scotish’ is not an error, but a varient spelling.