Florence Nightingale <br />laboured in Constantinople; <br />nursing surgical period <br />Crimean War casualties; <br />British soldiers treats <br />near on two weary legless years. <br /> <br />When weather worn <br />legendary embarking; <br />back to homogeneous <br />homeward climes; <br />when lady salient <br />wounds sapper took; <br />leave scented sanitary <br /> <br />supreme name <br />fame celebrity known; <br />prominent was <br />then heard spoken; <br />eminent upon lips <br />linking Anglo egotistic sphere. <br /> <br />Romance image centred <br />solitary shining light; <br />glowing beacon blazing <br />angelic in delirious night; <br />shimmer linen lamp glow <br />shrine associations shrive; <br /> <br />mourn most assorted supplanted <br />absolved patients disease died; <br />despite loving nurse care tendered <br />wounds infected could not survive; <br />in enfilade unhygienic carnage age <br />of gross medical delinquency. <br /> <br />Within Nightingale vaulted view <br />her fairy-tale towering room; <br />is lady carrion corpuscle defiant <br />haunted swept by spectre's broom; <br />within Crimean War Cemetery <br />lies legendary lamp tendered; <br /> <br />statistics stone bone testament <br />memory fried alive consecrated; <br />within matronly heart saintly <br />balm in experiences rendered ugly; <br />unlike image engraven times <br />of usurp convulsive urbane. <br /> <br /> <br />Copyright © Terence George Craddock<br /><br />Terence George Craddock (Spectral Images and Images Of Light)<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lady-with-a-lamp-light-florence-nightingale/
