Poems (Kennedy)/Working for The Red Cross

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
4590506Poems — Working for The Red CrossSara Beaumont Kennedy
WORKING FOR THE RED CROSS
THE room is long and wide; the hum
Of quick machines is on the air;
And a babel soft of many tongues,
And smiles and whispered words are there
       In that long room.

For at the tables and the whirring wheels
Are women, sewing deft and swift,
The things a wounded soldier needs
When caught to life from death's dark drift,
       Flotsam of war.

They come of sires of olden bloody wars,
These sewers in the summer sun;
Through generations long since dead
Their strain of ancestry has run
       On History's page.

Here sit, in quiet groups, "Colonial Dames,"
Plying their needles while they tell
Ancestral stories of fierce Indian strife,
And how was brought, through chaos dark as hell,
       The nation's soul.

And there the D. A. R.'s knit on and on,
And blend a record with the thread
Of how grim Revolution shook the hills
And trampled fields were stained with red
       Of their brave sires.

Here, too, are gray-haired women looking back
At wavering lines of Blue and Gray;
They stitch into each garment's hem
Pale memories of that vanished day,
       And kiss each seam.

And these—these other women grave of face,
Folding the "dressings," lined and pressed?
These are the mothers of the men
Gone forth upon the new war quest
       Where Freedom calls—

The brave, proud mothers and the "best beloved"
Of all the gallant men they spare;
They leave a blessing in each fold
And sew in every seam a prayer
       That peace may come.

********

So here in this long room are gathered up
The threads that spin the martial creed
Our country holds; and here there brood
The spirit-wings that patriots need
       Of love and faith.

The needles stop, the swift wheels softly whirr,
The sun goes golden to the west;
The Red Cross workers fold the garments by:
God keep each wearer safe and blest—
       That is our prayer.