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 shiprecked 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 eyes, full of tears, 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 flames 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Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr.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-Pré!"

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 of 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 madiy 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;