Sister Rose Gertrude. Prefatory Note.

Sister Rose Gertrude, who has sailed to be the Superior of theLepers’ Hospital at Kalawao, on the Island of Molokai, the home ofthe late Father Damien, is the daughter of the Vicar of Combe-Down, sometime chaplain of the Union and H.M. prison atBath.

A member of the Roman Catholic Church, and of one of its‘nursing’ sisterhoods, she feels that ‘ suffering is her vow and her profession.’ ‘Love which cannot suffer is unworthy of the nameof love.’

For years past it has been her desire to go forth and tend thelepers in their lonely island home, and she has equipped herself for the work by study in the hospitals and at the Pasteur Institutein Paris.

‘ It had always been,’ she said to a lady who interviewed heron the eve of her departure, ‘ my wish and my desire to do some of God’s work on earth into which I could throw mywhole being, where there was scope for the fullest self-sacrifice, and where I could follow Him who said : “ Greater love hathno man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”’

She handed shyly a little old prayer-book to the lady, andcontinued :

‘ I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, but unless I do Ishall not have explained one of the reasons of my great wish to go, and live with, and help the lepers.’

In Miss Fowler’s small, clear handwriting, a prayer was writtenon the leaf—the touching, pathetic prayer which is said to have been found on the chest of the Prince Imperial when he wascarried dead from the battle-field in Zululand.

Miss Fowler pointed to the passage : ‘ If Thou only givest onthis earth a certain sum of happiness, take, O God ! my share and bestow it on the most worthy . . . . . If Thou seekest vengeanceon man, strike me !’

If, Lord, Thy hand to each a sum doth give Of joy, take mine to be on others shed. And if Thou seekest vengeance, strike me dead So others live. Sister Rose with the clear blue eye, And the Dominic dress, and the milk-white hood, You have long resolved : you have crossed the flood ; You have out-faced death, and the leper’s ban, For the glory of God and the love of man ; At least, you can never die. It is true you sat in your sombre gown And waved a hand to the twilit shore ; It is true, when the funnels began to roar And the stern to lash in the Mersey tide, You looked back over the vessel’s side And thought of the Combe and the Down. But your soul had long ago crossed the seas To the tall dark cliffs with their ladders of sun, To the beach where the pitiless breakers run, Where the lepers wail on the prisoning strand, And the Christ alone with His loving hand Can lessen the sore disease. Sister Rose, there the roses glow, The wild convolvulus shines like fire, The air is as soft as heart can desire, The honey-bird gleams, and the fern-trees wave, But the ocean moans round an island grave, And-death is above and below. Sister Rose, you will land in a bay Where like jewels the fish will swim or sleep ; But the shark’s fierce fin sails out of the deep. Fair is the noon, but all night in the south The dread volcano flames from its mouth Anguish and sore dismay. One can bear to sit down by a corpse awhile, To see the face-cloth drawn from a face Which has won from death a renewal of grace ; But how will it be when the face that is death Still breathes and heaves through its knots with breath And counterfeits still a smile ? One can wait and watch by a coffin, when The lid is closed, and the cry unheard ; But what if the dead man called or stirred ? And what if the pain of our agony Were to tend the dead, and to hear the cry Of the still uncoffined men ? One can love and pity the wounded and weak, The mangled body whose face is whole, Whose eyes look forth with the look of a soul ; But ah, when the body has ceased to be The thing God made it, no eyes to see, No ears, and no lips to speak ! Sister Rose, when saw you the Lord ? Did you gaze at Him coming from off the hill When the leper cried, and He said, ‘ I will : Be clean !’ Or when did the angels meet And strew the lilies about your feet, And press your hands to the sword ? Sword of the spirit and lilies of life, Flower of the heart and weapon of fire, Tender and keen with the soul’s desire To dare this deed, and to face disease With the flush of your health ; in the Southern Seas To be unto Death for wife. When you were a child did the angels come, That day that you gave your cowslip ball To the crippled boy ? Did you hear the call When the birds were crying about their nest In the copse, and you carried with beating breast The wounded pigeon home ? When your life with the birds and the flowers was filled, With the sun and the dew of the Somerset lane, Did you go to the prisoner’s house of pain, Or take your little white heart of pity Into the grim and the sorrowing city, And feel that God’s will had willed ? Had you read of Siena’s Saint and the dove That hovered above the maiden’s head ? Or of her who, giving the leper a bed, Found Christ? Or of him who learned to die That the dying might live at Molokai, That thus you are sworn to Love ? Or was it a faded leaf with a prayer, They found on a fallen soldier’s breast, Which has sent you forth on your holy quest To beat down death, and if God must give The blow, to bear it, so brothers may live, And sisters your sunlight share ? It matters little : the angels came, Passed through the streets of the troubled town To the quiet village beneath the Down ; They touched your soul and they opened your eyes, They fired an altar of sacrifice And cast your heart in the flame. And ever since then your grey hills gleamed As grey as the native hills He knew, Who loved his friends to the death, and drew The whole world after: yea, yonder mill, With its arms outstretched on the top of the hill, Like a cross in the darkness seemed. Sister Rose Gertrude, the Gates of Heaven Are open for you; and your heart that was small Is wide to embrace the world at the call Of Love at the gates. Let England prove At the height of its power, its power to love : To you is the high task given.