Narrative and Legendary Poems: the Vaudois Teacher and Others From Volume I., the Works of Whittier by Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892

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! 1841.

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'Aulnay 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. "Now, why from yon battlements Speaks not my love! Why waves there no banner My fortress above?"

Dark and wild, from his deck St. Estienne gazed about, On fire-wasted dwellings, And silent redoubt; From the low, shattered walls Which the flame had o'errun, There floated no banner, There thundered no gun!

But beneath the low arch Of its doorway there stood A pale priest of Rome, In his cloak and his hood. With the bound of a lion, La Tour sprang to land, On the throat of the Papist He fastened his hand.