A MESSAGE
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911)
Was there ever message sweeter About the kitten by the fire,
Than that one from Malvern Hill, And mother's cranberry-pies; and
From a grim old fellow,-you there
remember? The words fell, and an utter
Dying in the dark at Malvern Hill. Silence brooded in the air.
With his rough face turned a little,
On, a heap of scarlet sand, just as he was drifting from them,
They found him, just within the Out into the dark, alone
thicket, (Poor old mother, waiting for your
With a picture in his hand, message,
Waiting with the kitten, all alone!),
With a stained and crumpled picture Through the hush his voice broke, Tell
Of a woman's aged face; her
Yet there seemed to leap a wild Thank you, Doctor-when you can,
entreaty, Tell her that I kissed her picture,
Young and living-tender-from the And wished I'd been a better
face man."
When they flashed the lantern on it,
Gilding all the purple shade, Ah, I wonder if the red feet
And stooped to raise him softly, Of departed battle-hours
That's my mother, sir," he said. May not leave for us their searching
Message from those distant hours.
"Tell her"-but he wandered, slipping Sisters, daughters, mothers, think you,
Into tangled words and cries, Would your heroes now or then,
Something about Mac and Hooker, Dying, kiss your pictured faces,
Something dropping through the
cries
Wishing they'd been better men?