The mother calls a blessing down on her who nursed her son,
And thanks of wounded heroes brave how well her work was done.
True womanhood has ever prov’d self-sacrificing, brave—
Last at the dear Redeemer’s Cross and earliest at His grave.
“The citizens of Cleveland may well be congratulated on the possession of this noble Institution. The rare skill of its eminent and accomplished surgeons, the sound teaching of its learned pathologist, combined with the tender nursing of your good and benevolent Sisterhood, will relieve many of the ills that flesh is heir to, and restore to many a grateful sufferer the God-given priceless boon of health.
“As a small token of grateful recollections to my nurses at New Orleans, I beg to present to the Sisters of Charity Hospital this engraving, one of the proof-sheets, copied from the beautiful painting of Constant Mayer, entitled ‘Consolation,’ and with it the following poem, which I take pleasure in writing for them, descriptive of the scene so admirably portrayed by the accomplished artist:
A Union soldier in his tent,
Weak, wounded and despairing lay;
The hectic flushes came and went,
As rose the din of battle fray.
The Army of the Cumberland
Saw him with eager, flashing eye
In its front rank undaunted stand,
Resolved to conquer or to die.
Firm and unflinching thus he stood,
While cannon belched through blood-red flames;
His chiefest thought his country’s good,
And next perchance a deathless name.
Sudden as lightning’s vivid glare
Shrilly shell burst above his head;
A fragment laid his bosom bare
And stretched him wounded with the dead.
Back to the rear the soldiers bore
The wounded comrade, faint and weak;
His “army blue” was stained with gore,
And death’s pale seal was on his cheek.
A surgeon dressed the ghastly wound
And counseled quiet and repose,
Then sought again the battleground,
Now thickly strewn with friends and foes.
Left to himself the wounded man
Bethought him of his early life,
Each wayward act and vicious plan,
Each worldly and unholy strife.