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 Filomena[C] 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._ * * * * *