The Red Cross Nurse

ONE summer day, gleaming in memory, We drove, my Joy and I, Through fragrant hawthorn lanes Gold-fringed with wisps of rye Brushed off the harvest wains, From that old, gladsome town of Shrewsbury, Throned on twin hills and girdled by a loop Of the brown Severn, out to Battlefield. Henry the Fourth with his usurping sword Smote here the haughty Percies, And after builded here, as due to Him Who made rebellion stoop And lesser traitors to chief traitor yield, A church. Decayed, restored, Its centuries afford. To stranger eyes, enshadowed by the view Of that ridged burial plain from which it grew, No sight more sacred than a crude Image of visage dim, Hewn by some ancient tool from forest wood, Our Lady of the Mercies. Even so long ago amid the slaughter, Hushed now beneath its coverlet of flowers, Groped this imperfect dream Of Pity, pure, divine. Madonna, look to-day upon thy daughter And know her by the crimson cross, the sign Of love that shall at last, at last redeem This war-torn world of ours