Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie

Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the fifth day / Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house. / Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession, / Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women, / Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore, / Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings, / Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland. / Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen, / While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of playthings.

Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there on the sea-beach / Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. / All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply; / All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. / Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, / Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard. / Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors / Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession / Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers. / Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country, / Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn, / So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended / Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters. / Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices, / Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions: -- / "Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain! / Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience! " / Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside / Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them / Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed.