The Re-Settlement of Acadia

THE rocky slopes for emerald had changed their garb of gray,
When the vessels from Connecticut came sailing up the bay,
There were flashing lights on every wave that drew the strangers on,
And wreaths of wild arbutus round the brows of Blomidon.

Five years in desolation the Acadian land had lain,
Five golden harvest moons had wooed the fallow fields in vain;
Five times the winter snows caressed, and summer sunsets smiled,
On lonely clumps of willows, and fruit trees growing wild.

There was silence in the forest, and along the Uniac shore,
And not a habitation from Canard to Beausejour,
But many a ruined cellar and many a broken wall
Told the story of Acadia's prosperity, and fall !

And even in the sunshine of that peaceful day in June,
When Nature swept her harp, and found the strings in perfect tune,
The land seemed calling wildly for its owners, far away,
The exiles scattered on the coast from Maine to Charleston Bay.

Where, with many bitter longings for their fair homes and their dead,
They bowed their heads in anguish, and would not be comforted ;
And like the Jewish exiles, long ago, beyond the sea,
They could not sing the songs of home in their captivity !

But the simple Norman peasant-folk shall till the land no more,
For the vessels from Connecticut have anchored by the shore,
And many a sturdy Puritan, his mind with Scripture stored,
Rejoices he has found at last his "garden of the Lord."

There are families from Jolland, from Killingworth and Lyme ;
Gentle mothers, tender maidens, and strong men in their prime ;
There are lovers who have plighted their vows in Coventry,
And merry children, dancing o'er the vessels' decks in glee.

They come as came the Hebrews into their promised land,
Not as to wild New England's shores came first the Pilgrim band,
The Minas fields were fruitful, and the Gaspereau had borne
To seaward many a vessel with its freight of yellow corn.

They come with hearts as true' as their manners blunt and cold,
To found a race of noble men of stern New England mould,
A race of earnest people, whom the coming years shall teach
The broader ways of knowledge and the gentler forms of speech.

They come as Puritans, but who shall say their hearts are blind
To the subtle charms of Nature and the love of human-kind!
The Blue Laws of Connecticut have shaped their thought, 'tis true,
But human laws can never wholly Heaven's work undo.

And tears fall fast from many an eye long time unused to weep,
For o'er the fields lay whitening the bones of cows and sheep —
The faithful cows that used to feed upon the broad Grand Pre",
And with their tinkling bells come slowly home at close of day.

And where the Acadian village stood, its roofs o'ergrown with moss,
And the simple wooden chapel with its altar and its cross,
And where the forge of Basil sent its sparks towards the sky,
The lonely thistle blossomed and the fire-weed grew high.

The broken dykes have been rebuilt a century and more,
The cornfields stretch their furrows from Canard to Beau-se"jour,
Five generations have been reared beside the -fair Grand Pre"
Since the vessels from Connecticut came sailing up the Bay.

And now across the meadows, while the farmers reap and sow,
The engine shrieks its discords to the hills of Gaspereau ;
And ever onward to the sea, the restless Fundy tide
Bears playful pleasure yachts and busy trade ships side by side.

And the Puritan has yielded to the softening touch of time,
Like him who still content remained in Killingworth and Lyme ;
And graceful homes of prosperous men make all the landscape fair,
And mellow creeds and ways of life are rooted everywhere.

And churches nestle lovingly on many a glad hillside,
And holy bells ring out their music in the eventide ;
But here and there, on untilled ground, apart from glebe or town,
Some lone surviving apple-tree stands leafless, bare and brown.

And many a traveller has found, as thoughtlessly he strayed,
Some long-forgotten cellar in the deepest thicket's shade,
And clumps of willows by the dykes, sweet-scented, fair and green,
That seemed to tell again the story of Evangeline.