The Children's hour and other poems Author:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SANTA FILOMENA. 33 SANTA FILOMENA.1 Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher le... more »vels rise. The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor 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, 1 This poem is in honor of Miss Nightingale, an English lady, who won the admiration of Christendom by her devotion to the sick and wounded in the Crimean War of 1854-55, when England and France were fighting Russia. Filomena [Latin, Philomela] is the Italian for Nightingale, and by a singular fortune there is a Saint Filomena whose memory is honored, and at Pisa, in Italy, there is a chapel dedicated to her, and over the altar a picture " 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." The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo I 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, Th...« less