Lady With A Lamp Light: Florence Nightingale Poem by Terence George Craddock (Spectral Images and Images Of Light)

Florence Nightingale
laboured in Constantinople;
nursing surgical period
Crimean War casualties;
British soldiers treats
near on two weary legless years.

When weather worn
legendary embarking;
back to homogeneous
homeward climes;
when lady salient
wounds sapper took;
leave scented sanitary

supreme name
fame celebrity known;
prominent was
then heard spoken;
eminent upon lips
linking Anglo egotistic sphere.

Romance image centred
solitary shining light;
glowing beacon blazing
angelic in delirious night;
shimmer linen lamp glow
shrine associations shrive;

mourn most assorted supplanted
absolved patients disease died;
despite loving nurse care tendered
wounds infected could not survive;
in enfilade unhygienic carnage age
of gross medical delinquency.

Within Nightingale vaulted view
her fairy-tale towering room;
is lady carrion corpuscle defiant
haunted swept by spectre's broom;
within Crimean War Cemetery
lies legendary lamp tendered;

statistics stone bone testament
memory fried alive consecrated;
within matronly heart saintly
balm in experiences rendered ugly;
unlike image engraven times
of usurp convulsive urbane.


Copyright © Terence George Craddock