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