Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By A Palace of Dreams, and Other Verse (1901). IV. In HospitalAda Bartrick Baker (1854 )
S
When you’re longing to be at them with the rest;
But I don’t lie here and mope; for the doctors say they hope
I shall soon be fit and lively as the best.
Such a supper they’re not likely to digest;
And d’ye think I cared a rap, though I’m only a poor chap,
For the bullet that they landed in my chest?
And the nurses are just angels—bar the wings:
When you’re lying here so weak that you hardly care to speak,
Oh! the comfort that a woman’s tending brings.
He was doing well, poor fellow! though the shot had touched his lung,
And the doctors did their best to pull him through.
I was with him when he died. The two locks of hair inside,
With his love, are for his mother, and for you.