And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature’s younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother’s breast?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?
As sweet o’er them her wild-flowers blow,
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever pressed,—
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?
What though the bigot’s ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer!
Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian’s lowliest forest-mound,—
And they have made it holy ground.
There ceases man’s frail judgment; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
O peeled and hunted and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!
And Nature’s God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known,—
The hidden language traced thereon;
Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings;
Not with our partial eye shall scan,
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban,
The spirit of our brother man!
ST. JOHN
The fierce rivalry between Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, and D’Aulnay Charnasy, a Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms one of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. La Tour received aid in several instances from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was attacked by D’Aulnay, and successfully defended by its high-spirited mistress. A second attack however followed in the fourth month, 1647, when D’Auluay was successful, and the garrison was put to the sword. Lady La Tour languished a few days in the hands of her enemy, and then died of grief.
“To the winds give our banner!
Bear homeward again!”
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne!
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean,
Streamed up the St. John.
O’er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
St. Saviour had looked
On the heretic sail,
As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.
The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her well,
And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell;
But the men of Monhegan,
Of Papists abhorred,
Had welcomed and feasted
The heretic Lord.
They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemaquid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.
And the prayers of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided,
Down Pentecost Bay.
Oh, well sped La Tour!
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch,
For his coming again.
O’er the Isle of the Pheasant
The morning sun shone,
On the plane-trees which shaded
The shores of St. John.
