Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence

Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison.

And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler,

Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it for ever.

Many familiar forms had disappeared in the nighttime;

Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers.

Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling

of wonder,

Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart,

while a shudder

Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flow

erets dropped from her fingers,

And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning.

Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish,

That the dying heard it, and started up from their

pillows.

On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man.

Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples;

But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for

a moment

Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood;

So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying.

Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of

the fever,

As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had

besprinkled its portals,

That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over.

Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit

exhausted

Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness,

Darkness of slumber and death, for ever sinking and sinking.

Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,

Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded

Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like,

"Gabriel! O my beloved!" and died away into silence.

Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the

home of his childhood;

Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them,

Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, walking under their shadow,

As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision.

Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids,

Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside.

Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered

Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken.

Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him,

Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom.

Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness,

As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind

at a casement.

All was ended now, the hope, and the fear,

and the sorrow,

All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied

longing,

All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of

patience!

And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom,

Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee!"