Sister Mary, all is quiet
In thy wards, and midnight nears:
Seek the scanty rest thou needest;
Seek the scanty rest thou grudgest,
All is hushed and no one fears.
But, though midnight, Sister Mary
Thinks it yet not time to go;
And the night-lamps shining dimly
Show her vaguely in the shadow
Moving softly to and fro.
What is it that she is doing,
Flitting round one sleeper’s bed;
Is she sprinkling something round it,
Something white as wheaten flour,
And on which she will not tread?
And at last the work is over,
And she goeth to her rest;
And she sleeps at once, exhausted
By long labour, and, it may be,
By strong struggles in her breast.
Nothing breaks upon the stillness
Of the night, except, afar,
Some faint shouts of ending revel
Or of brawling, in the quarters
Where the Spanish soldiers are.
Time wades slowly through the darkness
Till at last it reaches day,
And the city’s many steeples
Buried in the starless heaven
Grow distinct in sunless grey.
And the light wakes Sister Mary,
And she dresses in strange haste,
Giving God no prayer, and leaving
On her bed the beads and crosses
That should dangle from her waist.
And with unheard steps she hurries
Through the ward where all sleep on
To the bed in which is lying
He who day by day is growing
More inexorably wan.
All around the bed is sprinkled
Something white, like thin fresh snow,
Where a naked foot has printed
In the night a many footprints,
Sharp and clear from heel to toe:
Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
Dost thou know thy own small foot?
Would it fit those marks which make thee
Turn more pale than thy own paleness
If upon them it were put?
And the dying youth smiles faintly
Pleasure’s last accorded smile;
And he murmurs as he hears her,
“Sister Mary, I am better;
Let me hold thy hand awhile:
“Sister Mary, I would tell thee
Fain one thing before I die;
For a dying man may utter
What another must keep hidden
In the fastness of a sigh.
“Sister Mary, I have loved thee--
Is it sin to tell thee this?
And I dreamt--O God, be lenient
If ’tis sin--that thou didst give me
On the throat a long, long kiss.”