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Title: The Vengeance of Noel Brassard: A Tale of the Acadian Expulsion
Date of first publication: 1919
Author: Carman, Bliss (William Bliss) (Apr 15, 1861-Jun 8, 1929)
Date first posted: Nov. 12, 2013
Date last updated: Nov. 12, 2013
Faded Page eBook #20131110

This eBook was produced by: L. Harrison, Neanderthal
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                           The Vengeance of
                             Noel Brassard

                   _A Tale of the Acadian Expulsion_

                                  By

                             Bliss Carman




        _To J. H. B. and E. W. R._


    _When I was very young and small,_
    _You held me in your arms;_
    _Before that I could walk at all,_
    _I learned your gentlest charms._

    _When I was just a little chap,_
    _And couldn't say a thing,_
    _You used to take me in your lap_
    _And talk to me and sing._

    _Now I can make up my own songs_
    _And go about alone,_
    _And hear strange tales in foreign tongues_
    _Of people not my own;_

    _Yet all the new alluring strains,_
    _Wherever I may go,_
    _Are blended with the old refrains_
    _That sound of long ago._




            The Vengeance of

            Noel Brassard


    You say we English like to boast
    Of our fair play and British pluck.
    Well, here's a tale for you who toast
    Your toes and wish your friends good luck,
    This snowy Christmas time.

    You take our soft Acadian land
    In summer for your thoroughfare;
    One of the gardens from God's hand,
    Orchard and dike, it greets you there--
    A dream of the world's prime.

    But winter, when the snow comes down
    From the red edges of the fall,
    To cover babbling stream and town
    With velvet silence like a pall,
    Can you guess what it means?

    The rivers sleep; the sun is lost;
    And in the deep woods now and then
    Some great tree, riving in the frost,
    Cracks, and the stillness falls again
    Among the evergreens.

    But one man learned too well who prowls
    Those wintry barrens choked with snow,
    And guessed what manner of thing cowls
    Its empty visage from man so,
    Seeing that face too near.

    The Shadow Hunter, whose long stride
    Mortal has yet to tire or tame,
    Like moonbeam over mountain side
    Following round the world--whose name
    Men hold their breath to hear.

    And yet, they say, he has a word
    Sweeter than any save the sea,
    To summon those who once have heard
    Beyond the bourns of misery.
    Though one man doubted, I must think.

    Noel Brassard, named Beausoleil,
    That lovely fall . . . It was the year
    The English traitor did betray
    His king and honor; far and near
    He made his hapless province drink

    The dregs of sorrow; blood and bone,
    He ground them into dust between
    The upper and the nether stone,
    The French and English. Wide and green
    The farms lay in the sun;

    The apples hung in scarlet ropes
    And golden clusters; the ripe grain
    Went billowing up the mountain slopes;
    And over running dike and plain
    The thousand cattle one by one

    Trailed their long shadows by the sea.
    Grand Pré, Port Royal, Tantramar,
    Minas and Shubenacadie,
    Cobequid, Beausejour, Canard,
    Melanson, Aulac, and Pereau.

    What easier than, simple folk
    Fearing the majesty of law,
    To scatter them as the slow smoke
    Is scattered on a windy flaw,
    From Beaubassin to Gaspereau?

    Pluck them and set them down the world--
    A second St. Bartholomew--
    Leaving the land whence they are hurled
    For Lawrence and his pirate crew,
    Which we enjoy to-day!

    Noel Brassard stood by his door,
    And there was haste. The last to flee,
    When brand was set to granary floor,
    House, barn, and church, in Chipoudy,
    That fall, must for a moment stay,

    Loading his cart to climb the crest
    The sun at Michaelmas just clears.
    His wife with her tenth child at breast,
    His mother with her ninety years--
    Safe now and half-way up the hill.

    And there they halted; the red sun
    Crimsoned the fir-tops over them;
    Below they saw the great tide run
    Between the grassy dikes that hem
    The meadows, when the rivers fill

    From Fundy like a sluice. They saw
    Their windows in the sunset glare,
    Then the first smoke of burning straw
    Steal from a rick and burst and flare.
    But soft! What ails you, mother Brassard?

    What fancy shakes your age? "My son,
    I shall not go with you, for I
    Am dying, and my strength is done;
    And by your father I shall lie,
    Where the white crosses, are,

    This night." They listened. She was dead.
    (The record is La Guerne's, the priest
    Who buried her.) And as she said,
    It happened; the first soul released
    Upon that march with Death!

    At night two figures, digging late
    For safety, had brought to a close
    Their pious work; the graveyard gate
    Creaked on its hinges; the moon rose;
    And the white valley held its breath.

    Ah, Beausoleil, before you now
    The wilderness; and by your side
    The shadowy Walker of the Snow,
    To journey with you, stride for stride,
    On many a drifted valley floor!

    Behind you, worse than Death can do!
    As dust upon the stream is spilled,
    The wreckage of your kin shall strew
    The shores of the world. The land they tilled,
    A politician's prize of war.

    Small choice, Brassard! Your folk are sown
    To the four winds; to men henceforth
    From Baton Rouge to Blomidon,
    Labrador and the unpeopled North,
    "Acadian" is an exile's name.

    He chose the wilderness. Be sure
    There is a record of that trail
    From sounding Fundy to Chaleur,
    In the great map that does not fail!
    Yet now we only read, he came

    To the blue Restigouche with spring.
    Under their ice-floors did he hear
    Tobique and Napadogan sing,
    And Mamozekel whisper clear
    Secrets not good to know?

    By Villebon's fort did he press on,
    Where dwell the unwarlike Melecites
    By the great route of the St. John,
    In boreal colds and summer heats,
    From Nerepis to Cabineau?

    Or was his way by the North Shore,
    Far up to lonely Tracadie,
    Where the sand islands hear the roar
    Of the great gulf, and Miramichi
    Slows to meet the tide?

    Did the Sevogle see him flit,
    A gray and haggard shape of woe?--
    Or the headlong Nepisiguit,
    Where the Basque sailor long ago
    Wedded his Mohawk bride?

    He saw in the long solemn night
    The giant lanterns of the sky
    Streaming about the pole, to light
    His haunted trail. Nay, Beausoleil,
    Dark was your sunshine then!

    And always at the dusk of day,
    Out of the brushwood, pace for pace,
    Would come to join them on the way
    The One whose snowshoes left no trace,
    They knew not whence nor when.

    Mother and children, one by one,
    He bade the strangers stay with him;
    And they stayed. Beausoleil went on,
    With reeling mind and senses dim,
    One--three--five--nine--

    He saw them smile and close their eyes,
    As the tall Spectre of the cold
    Detained them by some wooded rise.
    Then sink to sleep within the fold
    Of moonlit drift and shine.

    In the first breaking-up of spring,
    To the blue Restigouche there came,
    With two pale children following
    Upon his heels, his eyes like flame,
    In the gaunt semblance of a man,

    Noel Brassard. Say, rather, one
    Who had looked horror in the face,
    And the bleak goblin had undone
    The latches of his soul. Yet trace
    Of hunter's skill to scheme and plan

    Was left,--the mind to hunt and hound
    His persecutors from the land.
    A frenzy at the very sound
    Of English names would twitch his hand
    To let the flintlock's hammer fall.

    Before he died on D'Anjac's roll,
    By thronged stockade and lonely hut
    He marked them; never missed a soul;
    And nicked them on his musket butt
    Twenty and eight in all.

    That is the story straight and plain.
    Because one Englishman could pawn
    His country's honor for mere gain,
    More need we English should not fawn
    On Truth to cloak his crime.

    Too simple your Acadian heart,
    My Noel, and too late you strove!
    Not in the world was your fit part.
    Yet peace! The world moves on to love,
    This snowy Christmas time.




                 ONE HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED BY
                 WILL BRADLEY AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
                 CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, IN DECEMBER,
                 MDCCCCXIX, FOR BLISS CARMAN




                          Transcriber's Notes


page 15: wildernees _changed to_ wilderness


[The end of _The Vengeance of Noel Brassard: A Tale of the Acadian Expulsion_ by Bliss Carman]