Classic Poem

I

Full many a gallant deed is lost in night.
But " the good German God" has rescued one
From Time, and Death, and dark Oblivion.
And set the jewel in the golden light.
They took her in the midnight drear and dead,
She stumbled, or her woman's strength gave way
The soldiers paused in pity as she lay,
Their Captain shot her bravely thro' the head!
Her crime? — Ah, to the weak she gave her life.
And loved too well the land where she was born!
O brave Teutonic Knight, if thou return
To her who bore thee, or thy bride, or wife,
Forget not thou thy crowning deed to tell:
" In the dead night I shot her where she tell! "

II

Ye men of England, in whose hearts still lives
Youth's generous blood, think ye 'twas Nurse Cavell
Was shot that night by those black hounds of Hell?
Nay, 'twas your mothers, sisters, sweethearts, wives!
Men who could make and sing the Hymn of Hate —
What was she, in their demon-haunted mind,
But symbol of all English womankind?
And in her doom ye may foreknow their fate,
If ye keep not inviolate your coast.
Yet she at least was sentenced by a court,
Her doom was only death, swift, sudden, short
But ah, your sisters, if your England's lost!
Rise, and avenge the noble heart that fell,
And drive these fiends back to their native Hell!

III

Dear soul, that livest in our souls for aye,
And for Love's sake didst count thy life but dross,
Within St. Gilles' dark yard sleeps well the clay
That shared Christ's glory on the bitter Cross.
Thou loved'st the weak: they made the weak their prey:
Who but the strong has any right to life?
Sleep well, dear dust, thou art beyond the strife,
The October night is now the Eternal Day!
Thy country was thy crime — they struck thro' thee
At England, and thou yet shalt be her shield;
From worse than death thy sisters thou shalt free,
And thy dead shade lead armies to the field:
O smile thou back on us from Paradise,
That not in vain may be thy sacrifice!