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Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr.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-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 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 ofterror 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 com

passion.

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.

season

When a happier

Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land

of our exile,

Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the church

yard."

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-Pré.

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.

'Twas 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 that tide the ships sailed out of the harbour,

Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins.

EVANGELINE.

PART THE SECOND.

I.

MANY a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pré,

When on the falling tide the freighted vessels de

parted,

Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into

exile,

Exile without an end, and without an example in

story.

Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed; Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the north-east

Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland.

Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city,

From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern

From the black shores of the sea to the lands where

the Father of Waters