Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender nightingale,
'Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel,
Singing medicine for your pain, in a sympathetic strain,
With a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.
Singing bandages and lint; salve and cerate without stint,
Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion,
And your mixtures pushed about, and the pills for you served out
With alacrity and promptitude of motion.
Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands
How to manage every sort of application,
From a poultice to a leech; whom you haven't got to teach
The way to make a poppy fomentation.
Singing pillow for you, smoothed; smart and ache and anguish soothed,
By the readiness of feminine invention;
Singing fever's thirst allayed, and the bed you've tumbled made
With a cheerful and considerate attention.
Singing succour to the brave, and a rescue from the grave,
Hear the nightingale that's come to the Crimea;
'Tis a nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song,
To carry out so gallant an idea.
Of course there were some people who shook their heads; there always are when any new work is undertaken. Some thought it was improper for women to nurse in a military hospital; others thought they would be useless, or worse; others again thought that the nurses would ruin their own health and be sent home in a month to the hospitals of England. There were still other objections, which were strongly felt in those days, however strange they may sound in our ears to-day.
"Oh, dreadful!" said some people; "Miss Nightingale is a Unitarian!"
"Oh, shocking!" said others. "Miss Nightingale is a Roman Catholic!" And so it went on. But while they were talking and exclaiming, drawing pictures and singing songs, Miss Nightingale was getting ready. In six days from the time she undertook the work she was ready to start, with thirty nurses, chosen with infinite care and pains from the hundreds who had volunteered to go. There was no flourish of trumpets. While England was still wondering how they could go, and whether they ought to be allowed to go—behold, they were gone! slipping away by night, as if they were bound on some secret errand. Indeed, Miss Nightingale has never been able to endure "fuss and feathers," and all her life she has looked for a bushel large enough to hide her light under, though happily she has never succeeded.
Only a few relatives and near friends stood on the railway platform on that evening of October 21, 1854. Miss Nightingale, simply dressed in black, was very quiet, very serene, with a cheerful word for everyone; no one who saw her parting look and smile ever forgot them. So, in night and silence, the "Angel Band" whose glory was soon to shine over all the world, left the shores of England.