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.
What to her was the song of the robin, or warm morning
light, As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless
of sound or sight?
Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
bitter bread; The world of the alien people lay behind
her dim and dead.
But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw
the sun o’erflow With gold the Basin of Minas,
and set over Gaspereau;
The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea
at flood, Through inlet and creek and river, from
dike to upland wood;
The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk’s
rise and fall, The drift of the fog in moonshine,
over the dark coast-wall.
She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song
she sang; And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for
vespers rang.
By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing
the wrinkled sheet, Peering into the face, so helpless,
and feeling the ice-cold feet.
With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and long
abuse, By care no longer heeded and pity too late
for use.
Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the
mistress stepped, Leaned over the head-board, covering
his face with his hands, and wept.
