Could She Do Less

Calmly the Red Cross nurse worked, mid the drone of the planes and the burst of shell; To the new made mother in the narrow bed, the sound was a prelude to another night of Hell.
The look of bitterness in the fair young face, that should have shown only pride and joy Told of a hatred of the enemy that had made her the widowed mother of her new-born boy.
Mingled with the staccato of the machine gun fir came the pitiful wail of a child Pitifully thin, it died away, to be echoed, redoubled by the shriek of a siren gone wild. “Can’t you quiet that child?”, the mother asked of a white clad nurse passing by.
“Its mother has died, we have no milk, if it does not get nourishment ’twill surely die”. “Let it die! They killed my baby’s father! What do they care that he will never see his son?”
“I came here that he might be with me in my hour,
But those cruel words, Killed in Action; told me he would never come.
Oh, I hate them! Hate even that crying baby, his father might have been the one
To speed the bullet that closed my darling’s eyes forever from the light of God’s sun” Her outbreak over, the gentle nurse soothing her as best she may:
She gazed upon her son, as cradled on her arm he lay.
“How like his father! What fate’s in store for him?”
And as her thoughts arose, again the pitiful cry, high and thin.
“Oh, God, what if that were my child, doomed to die by mans cruel greed and lust?” Who am I to mete vengeance to the innocent, I can help him, I must
Nurse bring me that baby, I have nourishment enough for two;
To fill a baby’s stomach is little enough to do
For Him who gave His only Son that we might live;
And by His blessed example, teach His children to forgive.
Dear God, teach me these two babes to discipline (so far apart yet nourished from one breast,)
That they, brotherly love may attain
And so show all mankind, that God still lives,
And on a darkened world, His love will shine again

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