Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, February 23, 1999

Longfellow kept alive the story of Acadian exile

by Jim Bradshaw

Here are parts of the long poem in which the poet describes the Acadians' last days in their ancestral homeland.

Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the village of Grand Pré.
Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air at the Basin of Minas,
Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding at anchor.
Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor
Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning.
Now from the country around, from the farms and neighboring hamlets
Came in their holiday dresses the blithe Acadian peasants.
Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk
Made the bright air brighter as up from the numerous meadows,
Where no path could be seen but the track of wheels in the greensward.
Group after group appeared, and joined or passed on the highway.
Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced.
Thronged were the streets with people and noisy groups at the house-roofs
Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together.

So passed the morning way and lo! with a summons sonorous
Sounded the bell from its tower and over the meadows a drum beat,
Thronged erelong was the church with men.
Without in the churchyard,
Waged the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones
Garlands of autumn leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest.
Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them
Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor
Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,
Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal
Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers,
Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the altar,
Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission.
"You are convened this day, " he said, "by his Majesty's orders.
Clement and kind has he been but how you have answered his kindness;
Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and temper
Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous.
Yet I must bow and obey, and deliver the will of the monarch;
Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds
Forfeited be to the crown' and that you yourselves from this province
Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there
Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people!
Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure! "
As, when the air is serene in sultry solstice of summer,
Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of hailstones
Beats down the farmer's com in the field and shatters his windows,
Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs,
Bellowing the herds, and seek to break their enclosures;
So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker.
Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder and then rose
Louder and ever louder, a wail of sorrow, and anger,
And, by one impulse, moved, they madly rushed to the doorway.
Vain was the hope of escape; and cries and fierce imprecations
Rang through the house of prayer.

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides
Wandered, wailing from house to house the women and children.
Four times the sun had risen and set, and now on the fifth day
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farmhouse.
Soon o'er the yellow field in silent and mournful procession,
Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women,
Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the seashore,
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 Gasperau's mouth they hurried; and there on the seabeach
Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants.
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 waywarn,
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 Savior! 0 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 way-side
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed.

Thus to the Gasperau's mouth moved on that mournful procession.

There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking.
Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion
Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children
Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties.

Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red
Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon
Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon the mountain and meadow,
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 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 flames 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 farmyards,
Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of cattle
Came on the even evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted.

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 day, came heaving and hurrying landward.
Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking
And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins.