Poems (Tynan)/The New Nurse

by Katharine Tynan

THE NEW NURSE

When other children shut their eyes
 The sick child coughs and weeps alone,
And Nanna, Nanna, Nanna, cries,
 Because the nurse he loved is gone.
Between the coughing, with new hope
Watches the door she will not ope.

Between the coughing listens keen
 For feet upon the nursery stair.
The nursery hearth is bright and clean,
 The walls have pictures rich and rare.
Alas, the little luckless wight,
Whose world has gone to pieces quite!

Alack, the dear remembered head.
 Black on its pillow through the year!
The terrible stranger wears instead
 Light hair. O Nanna, Nanna dear,
Where do you hide through his alarms
Your comfortable breast and arms?

Alone with her the long night through
 And ill—could anything be worse?
No goblin 's grimmer in his view
 Than this cold, patient, stranger nurse.
But though he calls for Nanna still,
No Nanna comes nor ever will.