No villas with porticos handsome, wide,
Then dotted our queenly mountain’s side;
No busy and populous city nigh
Raised steeples and domes to the clear blue sky;
Uncleared, unsettled our forests hoar
Unbridged out river, unwharfed each shore;
While over the waves of emerald hue
Glided, lightly, the Indian’s bark canoe.
It was in those towers—the Southern one—
Sister Margaret Bourgeoys, that sainted nun,
Sat patiently teaching, day after day,
How to find to Jesus the blessed way,
’Mid the daughters swarth of the forest dell,
Who first from her lips of a God heard tell,
And learned the virtues that woman should grace,
Whatever might be her rank or race.
Here, too, in the chapel-tower buried deep,
An Indian brave and his grand-child sleep.*
True model of womanly virtues—she—
Acquired at Margaret Bourgeoys’ knee;
He, won to Christ from his own dark creed,
From the trammels fierce of his childhood freed,
Lowly humbled his savage Huron pride,
And amid the pale-faces lived and died.
With each added year grows our city fair,
The steepled church, and spacious square,
Villas and mansions of stately pride
Embellish it now on every side;
Buildings—old land marks—vanish each day,
For stately successors to make way;
But from change like that may time leave free
The ancient towers of Ville Marie!
* Subjoined are their epitaphs, still to be seen in the tower we speak of:
Ici reposent
Les restes mortels
de
François Thoronhiongo,
Huron,
Baptisé par le Révérend
Père Brébeuf.
Il fut par sa piété et par sa probité, l’exemple des chrétiens et l’admiration des infideles; il mourut âgé d’environ 100 ans, le 21 avril 1690.
Ici reposent
Les restes mortels
de
Marie Thérèse Gannensagouas
de la
Congrégation de Notre Dame.
Après avoir exercée pendant treize ans l’office de maitresse d’école à la montagne, elle mourut en reputation de grande vertu, âgée de 28 ans, le 25 novembre 1695.