While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted

Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco.

Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her spirit;

Something within her said, “At length thy trials are

ended;"

1330

And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness.

Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attend

ants,

Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence

Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces,

Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside.

1335

Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, 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 forever.

1340

1328. The Swedes' church at Wicaco is still standing, the oldest in the city of Philadelphia, having been begun in 1698. Wicaco is within the city, on the banks of the Delaware River. An interesting account of the old church and its historic associations will be found in Westcott's book just mentioned, pp. 56–67. Wilson the ornithologist lies buried in the churchyard adjoining the church.

Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night

time;

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 flowerets dropped from her fingers,

1345

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;

1350

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

over.

1355

pass

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

exhausted

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

Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and

sinking.

Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,

1360

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,

1365

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

1370

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.

1875

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!"

1380

Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,

Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are

sleeping.

Under the humble walls of the little Catholic church

yard,

In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and un

noticed.

Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside

them,

1385

Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,

Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,

Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,

Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!

Still stands the forest primeval; but under the

shade of its branches

1390

Dwells another race, with other customs and language.

Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic

Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from

exile

Wandered back to their native land to die in its

bosom.

In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still

busy ;

1395

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,

And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.