Classic Poem

" Out of the fort! " came the word of command,
" Shoreward, good comrades of Poutrincourt's band! "
Wide swung the gates in the earth-bastioned wall,
No one delayed, save the guard, at the call.

Soldiers stepped quickly with clattering feet
Over the wooden moat-bridge to the street,
Swords rattled, sabre sheaths flashed to the sky,
Sentries saluted and colours waved high.

Through fern-clad fields to the shell-covered shore
Swift marching, trod the trained veteran corps,
Captained, accoutred, as if on the tide
Some English war-ship that day had been spied.

Look o'er the basin as far as you may
Not a sail flecks the horizon to-day,
Not a sound ruffles the still air of June
Save the satisfied swish of the tide at high noon,

But by the sea-verge, his eyes to the east,
Vested and stoled, stands the Recollet priest;
Captains and courtiers around him, in state,
Lackeys and laborers, expectantly wait.

Forth from their steep-pointed wigwams of pine
Silently stepping in slow single line,
Speechless, as if by a vision struck dumb,
Hundreds of wampum-decked Indians come,

Back of old Membertou, chief of the land,
Reverently facing the friar they stand,
Childlike, submissive, some true sense of need
Sealing their spirits to Christ and his creed.

Eastward the river, lethargic and dun,
Lies like a serpent asleep in the sun,
Southward the forest, an ocean of green,
Rolls its luxuriant waves from the scene.

Suddenly sounds from the guard on the wall
One silver bugle-blast, and at the call
Josue Fleche, the spare Recollet priest,
Piously crossing himself to the east,

Chants in good Latin faith's formula old,
Said through the ages by millions untold.
Making the sign of the Christian belief
First he baptizes the gray-headed chief,

Then to the tribe fathers, twenty or more,
Gives the blest rite, while away from the shore
To the edge of the pine woods, all trackless and dim,
Travel the strains of the Church's great hymn:

" Te Deum laudamus , " sing soldier and priest,
" The world doth adore thee, the west like the east;
Acadia's children with angels on high
Henceforth to the Son of the Virgin shall cry. "

This was the new world's first triumph for God,
Here on Port Royal's fresh-burgeoning sod
Poutrincourt's pioneer band ushered in
Christian beliefs and the conquest of sin.

Carry the news of it back to the east,
Tell how Acadia's Recollet priest
Won to the Church and her sacraments true
These Micmac men and their chief, Membertou,

Plucked the first fruits of whole harvests to be,
Kindled a fire that the ages should see;
Let the news spread how a continent came
Under the sway of the thrice holy name!