"I, for his sake, were he but here,
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear,
"Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet,
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set.
"But now my soul with his soul I wed; Thine the living, and mine the dead!" 1871.
MARGUERITE.
MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760.
Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly taken from their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were assigned to the several towns of the Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by the authorities to service or labor.
THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
blossoms grew;
Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins
knew!
Sick, in an alien household, the poor French
neutral lay;
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April
day,
Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's
warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs
of roof,
The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the
stand,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from
her sick hand.
What to her was the song of the robin, or warm
morning light,
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of
sound or sight?
Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
bitter bread;
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim
and dead.
But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw
the sun o'erflow
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over
Gaspereau;