“But I heard a voice cry out my name,
Up from the sea on the wind it came.
“Twice and thrice have I heard it call,
And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!”
On her pillow the sister tossed her head.
“Hall of the Heron is safe,” she said.
“In the tautest schooner that ever swam
He rides at anchor in Anisquam.
“And, if in peril from swamping sea
Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?”
But the girl heard only the wind and tide,
And wringing her small white hands she cried,
“O sister Rhoda, there’s something wrong;
I hear it again, so loud and long.
“‘Annie! Annie!’ I hear it
call,
And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!”
Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame,
“Thou liest! He never would call thy name!
“If he did, I would pray the wind and sea
To keep him forever from thee and me!”
Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast;
Like the cry of a dying man it passed.
The young girl hushed on her lips a groan,
But through her tears a strange light shone,—
The solemn joy of her heart’s release
To own and cherish its love in peace.
“Dearest!” she whispered, under breath,
“Life was a lie, but true is death.
“The love I hid from myself away
Shall crown me now in the light of day.
“My ears shall never to wooer list,
Never by lover my lips be kissed.
“Sacred to thee am I henceforth,
Thou in heaven and I on earth!”
She came and stood by her sister’s bed
“Hall of the Heron is dead!” she said.
“The wind and the waves their work have done,
We shall see him no more beneath the sun.
“Little will reek that heart of thine,
It loved him not with a love like mine.
“I, for his sake, were he but here,
Could hem and ’broider thy bridal gear,
“Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet,
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set.
“But now my soul with his soul I wed;
Thine the living, and mine the dead!”
1871.
Massachusetts Bay, 1760.
Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly
taken from their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin
of Minas were assigned to the several towns of the
Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by
the authorities to service or labor.
The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
blossoms grew; Little of human sorrow the buds and
the robins knew! Sick, in an alien household,
the poor French neutral lay; Into her lonesome garret
fell the light of the April day, Through the dusty
window, curtained by the spider’s warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs
of roof, The bedquilt’s faded patchwork, the
teacups on the stand, The wheel with flaxen tangle,
as it dropped from her sick hand.
