Classic Poem

In her work there is no flagging,
And her slightness seems of steel;
And her face and eyes and motions,
Tried by countless nights of watching,
Nor fatigue nor pain reveal.

Yet the Sisters say she eats not,
Spurning food as ne'er did saint,
And they murmur, " She is nourished
By a miracle of Heaven;
God allows her not to faint. "

Through the darkened wards she passes
On her rounds from bed to bed;
And the sick who wait her coming
Cease their moaning, smiling faintly
As they hear her light quick tread.

Through the gabled lanes she hurries;
And the ribald men-at-arms
Hush their mirth, and, stepping backward,
Let her pass to soothe some death-bed,
Safe from insults and alarms.

And the priests and monks and townsfolk
Whom she passes, greet her sight
With a strange, respectful pleasure
As she nears in dark blue flannel
And huge cap of spotless white.

Oh, the busy Flemish city
Knows its Sister Mary well;
And the very children show her
To the stranger as she passes,
And her story all can tell:

How she won a lasting glory,
Cleaving to the dread bedside,
When the Plague with livid pinions
Lighted on the crowded alleys,
And all others fled or died:

How alone she made men listen
In their fear, and do her will;
Making help and making order,
When the customary rulers
Trembled helpless and stood still:

How she had the corpses buried
When they choked canal and street;
When alone the shackled convicts,
Goaded on with pike and halberd,
Cared to near with quaking feet.

But those days of fear are over,
And the pure canal reflects
Barges decked with pots of flowers
And long rows of tile-faced gables,
Which no breeze of death infects.

And once more the city prospers
Through the cunning of its guilds;
While the restless shuttles clatter,
And in peace the busy Fleming
Weaves and tans and brews and builds;

And the bearded Spanish troopers,
Sitting idly in the shade,
Toss their dice with oath and rattle,
Or crack jokes with girls that pass them,
Laughing-eyed and unafraid.

II

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
In thy soul there is some change;
For thy face, the while thou watchest
By a pale young Spanish soldier,
Works with struggle strong and strange.

Thou hast watched a hundred death-beds,
Ever calm without dismay,
Fighting like a steady fighter,
While the shade of Death pressed onward,
Night on night and day on day.

And when Death had proved the stronger,
Thou wouldst heave a sigh at most,
And then turn to some new moaner,
Ready to resume the battle,
Just as steady at thy post.

Now thy soul is filled with anguish
Strange and wild, thou know'st not why;
While a voice unknown and inward
Seems to whisper, far and faintly,
" If he dies, thou too wilt die. "

Many months has he been lying
In thy ward, and rises not;
Youth and strength avail him nothing;
Growing daily whiter, whiter,
Dying of men know not what.

And he murmurs, " Sister Mary,
Now the end is nearing fast;
Thou hast nursed me like God's angel;
But the hand of God is on me,
And thy care must end at last.

" I have few, few days remaining;
Now I scarce can draw my breath
See my hand: no blood is in it;
And I feel like one who slowly,
Slowly, slowly bleeds to death. "

And his worn and heavy eyelids
Close again as if in sleep;
While thou lookest on his features
With a long and searching anguish
In thy eyes that dare not weep.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
Watch him closer, closer still!
There be things within the boundless
Realm of Horror unsuspected —
Things that slowly, slowly kill!

In his face there is no colour,
And his hand is ivory-white;
But upon his throat is something
Like a small red stain or puncture,
Something like a leech's bite.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
Dost thou see that small red stain?
Hast thou never noted something
Like it on the throats of others,
Whom thy care has nursed in vain?

Have no rumours reached thee, Sister,
Of a Thing that haunts these wards
When the scanty sleep thou takest
Cheats the sick of the protection
That thy vigilance affords?

When, at night, the ward is silent
And the night-lamp's dimness hides,
And the nurse on duty slumbers
In her chair with measured breathing —
Then it glides, and glides, and glides,

Like a woman's form, new risen
From the grave with soundless feet,
Clad in something which the shadows
Of the night-lamp render doubtful
Whether robe or winding-sheet.

And its eyes seem fixed and sightless,
Like the eyeballs of the dead;
But it gropes not and moves onward
Sure and silent, seeking something,
In the ward, from bed to bed.

And if any, lying sleepless,
Sees it, he becomes as stone;
Terror glues his lips together,
While his eyes are forced to follow
All its movements, one by one.

And he sees it stop, and hover
Round a bed, with wavering will,
Like a bat which, ere it settles,
Flits in circles ever smaller,
Nearer, nearer, nearer still.

Then it bends across the sleeper,
Restless in the sultry night,
And begins to fan him gently
With its garment, till his slumber
Groweth deep and dreamless quite!

And its corpse-like face unstiffens,
And its dead eyes seem to gloat,
As, approaching and approaching,
It applies its mouth of horror
Slowly, firmly, to his throat.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
Has no rumour told thee this?
What if he whose life thou lovest
Like thine own, and more, were dying
Of that long, terrific kiss?

III

From the hospital's arched window,
Open to the summer air,
You can see the monks in couples
All returning home at sunset
Through the old cathedral square.

On the steps of the cathedral,
In the weak, declining sun,
Sit the beggars and the cripples;
While faint gusts of organ-pealing
Tell that vespers have begun.

Slowly creeps the flood of shadow
Up the steps and sculptured front,
Driving back the yellow sunshine
On each pinnacle and buttress,
Which the twilight soon makes blunt.

Slowly evening grasps the city,
And the square grows still and lone;
No one passes, save, it may be,
Up the steps and through the portal,
Some stray monk or tottering crone.

In this room, which seems the study
Of the hospital's chief leech,
There is no one; but the twilight
Makes all objects seem mysterious,
Like a conscious watcher each.

Here the snakes whose venom health
Stand in jars in hideous file;
While the skulls that crown the book-shelves
Seem to grim; and, from the ceiling,
Hangs the huge stuffed crocodile.

Here be kept the drugs and cordials
Which the Jew from Syria brings;
And perchance drugs yet more precious,
Melted topaz, pounded ruby,
Such as save the lives of kings.

All is silent in the study,
But the door-hinge creaks anon,
And a woman enters softly,
Seeking something that seems hidden —
One unnaturally wan.

What she seeks is not in phials,
Not in jars, but in a book;
And she mutters as she searches
Through the book-shelves with a curious
Brooding hurry in her look.

And she finds the book, and takes it
To the window for more light;
And she reads a passage slowly
With constrained and hissing breathing,
And dark brow contracted tight.

" Most of them , " it says, " are corpses
That have lain beneath the moon,
And that quit their graves at midnight,
Prowling round to prey on sleepers;
But the daybreak scares them soon.

" But the worst, called soulless bodies,
Plague the world but now and then;
They have died in some great sickness,
But, reviving in the moonbeams,
Rise once more and mix with men.

" And they act and feel like others,
Never guessing they be dead.
Common human food they love not;
But at night, impelled by hunger,
In their sleep they quit their bed;

" And they fasten on some sleeper,
Feeding on his living blood;
Who, when life has left his body,
Must in turn arise, and, prowling,
Seek the like accursed food. "

And the book escapes her fingers,
And she casts her down to pray;
But convulsions seize and twist her,
And delirious ramblings mingle
With the prayers she tries to say.

In her mouth there is a saltness;
On her lips there is a stain;
In her soul there is a horror;
In her vitals there is something
More like raging thirst than pain.

And she cries, " O God, I knew it;
Have I not, at dead of night,
Waking up, looked round and found me
On the ledge of roofs and windows,
In my shift, and shrieked with fright?

" Have I not, O God of Mercy,
Passed by shambles in the street,
And stopped short, in monstrous craving,
For the crimson blood that trickled
In the gutter at my feet?

" Did I not, at last Communion,
Cough the holy Wafer out?
Blood I suck; but Christ's flesh chokes me.
O my God, my God, vouchsafe me
Some strong light in this great doubt! "

And she sinketh crushed and prostrate
In the twilight on the floor,
While the darkness grows around her,
And her quick and laboured breathing
Grows convulsive more and more.

IV

Sister Mary; all is quiet
In thy wards, and midnight nears:
Seek the scanty rest thou needest;
Seek the scanty rest thou grudgest:
All is hushed and no one fears.

But, though midnight, Sister Mary
Thinks it not yet time to go;
And the night-lamps, shining dimly,
Show her vaguely in the shadow
Moving softly to and fro.

What is Sister Mary doing,
Flitting round one sleeper's bed;
Is she sprinkling something round it,
Something white as wheaten flour,
And on which she will not tread?

And at last the work is over,
And she goeth to her rest;
And she sleeps at once, exhausted
By long labour, and, it may be,
By strong struggles in her breast.

Nothing breaks upon the stillness
Of the night, except, afar,
Some faint shouts of ending revel
Or of brawling, in the quarters
Where the Spanish soldiers are.

Time wades slowly through the darkness,
Till at last it reaches day;
And the city's many steeples,
Buried in the starless heaven,
Grow distinct in sunless grey.

And the light wakes Sister Mary,
And she dresses in strange haste,
Giving God no prayer, and leaving
On her bed the beads and crosses
That should dangle from her waist.

And with unheard steps she hurries
Through the ward where all sleep on,
To the bed on which is lying
He who day by day is growing
More inexorably wan.

All around the bed is sprinkled
Something white, like thin fresh snow,
Where a naked foot has printed
In the night a many footprints,
Sharp and clear from heel to toe.

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
Dost thou know thy own small foot?
Would it fit those marks that make thee
Turn more pale than thy own paleness,
If upon them it were put?

And the dying youth smiles faintly
Pleasure's last accorded smile;
And he murmurs as he hears her,
" Sister Mary, I am better;
Let me hold thy hand a while.

" Sister Mary, I would tell thee
Fain one thing, before I die;
For a dying man may utter
What another must keep hidden
In the fastness of a sigh.

" Sister Mary, I have loved thee —
Is it sin to tell thee this?
And I dreamt — O God, be lenient,
If 'tis sin — that thou didst give me
On the throat a long, long kiss. "