Evangeline | Page 2

time from France, and since, as an heirloom,?Handed down from mother to child, through long generations.?But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty--?Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession,?Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her.?When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer?Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady?Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it.?Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a footpath?Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow.?Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse,?Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the roadside,?Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary.?Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown?Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses.?Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard,?There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows;?There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,?Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame?Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.?Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one?Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase,?Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft.?There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates?Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes?Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation.
Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand-Pre?Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his household.?Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his missal,?Fixed his eyes upon her, as the saint of his deepest devotion;?Happy was he who might touch her hand or the hem of her garment!?Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended,?And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her footsteps,?Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron;?Or at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village,?Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered?Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music.?But, among all who came, young Gabriel only was welcome;?Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith,?Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men;?For, since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations,?Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people.?Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood?Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician,?Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters?Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song.?But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed,?Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith.?There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him?Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything,?Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel?Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders.?Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness?Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice,?Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows,?And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes,?Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel.?Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle,?Down the hillside bounding, they glided away o'er the meadow.?Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters,?Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow?Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings;?Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow!?Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were children.?He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning,?Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened through into action.?She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman.?"Sunshine of Saint Eulalie" was she called; for that was the sunshine?Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples;?She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance,?Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children.
II.
NOW had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer,?And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters.?Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound,?Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands.?Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September?Wrestled