Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in

mid air

Waved like banners that hang on the walls of

ancient cathedrals.

Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons

Home to their roosts in the cedar trees returning at sunset,

Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter.

Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water,

Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches,

Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin.

Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them;

And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness,

Strange forebodiugs of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed.

As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf

of the prairies,

Far in advance are closed the leaves of the

shrinking mimosa,

So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebod

ings of evil,

Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it.

But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly

Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight.

It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom.

Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her,

And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer.

Then in his place, at the prow of the boat,

rose one of the oarsmen,

And, as a signal sound,-if others like them peradventure

Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, - blew a blast on his bugle.

Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the blast rang,

Breaking the seal of silence, and giving tongues to the forest.

Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music.

Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance,

Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches;

But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness;

And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.

Then Evangeline slept ; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight;

Silent at times, and then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs,

Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian

rivers.

And through the night were heard the myste rious sounds of the desert,

Far off, indistinct, as of wave or wind in the forest,

Mixed with the woop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator.

Thus ere another noon they emerged from those shades; and before them

Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya.

Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations

Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus

Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen.

Faint was the air with the odorous breath of

magnolia blossoms,

And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan islands,

Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of roses,

Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber.

Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were suspended.

Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that grew by the margin,

Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on the greensward,

Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slumbered.

Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar.

Swinging from its great arms, the trumpetflower and the grape-vine,

Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob,

On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending,