Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the
fifth day
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of
the farm-house.
Soon o’er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful
procession,
Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian
women,
Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to
the sea-shore,
Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their
dwellings,
Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road
and the woodland.
Close at their sides their children ran, and urged
on the oxen,
While in their little hands they clasped some fragments
of playthings.
Thus to the Gaspereau’s mouth they hurried;
and there on the sea-beach
Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the
peasants.
All day long between the shore and the ships did the
boats ply;
All day long the wains came laboring down from the
village.
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his
setting,
Echoed far o’er the fields came the roll of
drums from the churchyard.
Thither the women and children thronged. On
a sudden the church-doors
Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in
gloomy procession
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian
farmers.
Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes
and their country,
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary
and wayworn,
So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended
Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives
and their daughters.
Foremost the young men came; and, raising together
their voices,
Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:—
“Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible
fountain!
Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission
and patience!”
Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that
stood by the wayside
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine
above them
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits
departed.
Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in
silence,
Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of
affliction,—
Calmly and sadly she waited, until the procession
approached her,
And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion.
Team then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to
meet him,
Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder,
and whispered,—
“Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one
another
Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances
may happen!”
Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly paused,
for her father
Saw she slowly advancing. Alas! how changed
was his aspect!
Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from
his eye, and his footstep
Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart
in his bosom.
But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck
and embraced him,
Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort
availed not.
Thus to the Gaspereau’s mouth moved on that
mournful procession.
There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir
of embarking.
Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion
Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers,
too late, saw their children
Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest
entreaties.
So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried,
While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with
her father.
Half the task was not done when the sun went down,
and the twilight
Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent
ocean
Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the
sand-beach
Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the
slippery sea-weed.
Farther back in the midst of the household goods and
the wagons,
Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle,
All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near
them,
Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers.
Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing
ocean,
Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and
leaving
Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of
the sailors.
Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from
their pastures;
Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk
from their udders;
Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars
of the farm-yard,—
Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand
of the milkmaid.
Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no
Angelus sounded,
Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights
from the windows.
But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had
been kindled,
Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks
in the tempest.
Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were
gathered,
Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying
of children.
Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth
in his parish,
Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing
and cheering,
Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita’s desolate
sea-shore.
Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat
with her father,
And in the flickering light beheld the face of the
old man,
Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought
or emotion,
E’en as the face of a clock from which the hands
have been taken.
Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to
cheer him,
Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked
not, he spake not
But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering
fire-light.
“Benedicite!” murmured the priest, in
tones of compassion.
More he fain would have said, but his heart was full,
and his accents
Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a
child on a threshold,
Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence
of sorrow.
Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head
of the maiden,
Raising his tearful eyes to the silent stars that
above them
Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and
sorrows of mortals.
Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together
in silence.
Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn
the blood-red
Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o’er
the horizon
Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain
and meadow,
Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge
shadows together.
Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of
the village,
Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that
lay in the roadstead.
Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame
were
Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the
quivering hands of a martyr.
Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning
thatch, and, uplifting,
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a
hundred house-tops
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.
These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore
and on shipboard.
Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in
their anguish,
“We shall behold no more our homes in the village
of Grand-Pre!”
Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farm-yards,
Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of
cattle
Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs
interrupted.
Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping
encampments
Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt
the Nebraska,
When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the
speed of the whirlwind,
Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the
river.
Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the
herds and the horses
Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed
o’er the meadows.
Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the
priest and the maiden
Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened
before them;
And as they turned at length to speak to their silent
companion,
Lo! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad
on the sea-shore
Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed.
Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and
the maiden
Knelt at her father’s side, and wailed aloud
in her terror.
Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her head on
his bosom.
Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious
slumber;
And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude
near her.
Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully
gazing upon her,
Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion.
Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the
landscape,
Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces
around her,
And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering
senses.
Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the
people,—
“Let us bury him here by the sea. When
a happier season
Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land
of our exile,
Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the
churchyard.”
Such were the words of the priest. And there
in haste by the sea-side,
Having the glare of the burning village for funeral
torches,
But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of
Grand-Pre.
And as the voice of the priest repeated the service
of sorrow,
Lo! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast
congregation,
Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with
the dirges.
’T was the returning tide, that afar from the
waste of the ocean,
With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying
landward.
Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking;
And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out
of the harbor,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the
village in ruins.
