Classic Poem

Against the background of the shadowy years
Are painted, but they have no smiles or tears
Or heart-throbs, like the living ones we know,
The forms of most great men, dead long ago.

Some spirits have there been in history,
Who with the vanished centuries cannot die,
But in the living world still keep their place,
So strong are they, so charged with every grace.

This noble heroine of the Acadian land,
A woman born for love and for command,
Enframed with brilliant forests and blue bays
Seems like a picture, but she lives with us always.

Amidst the fogs that hide the rugged face
Of the New Brunswick shore with filmy grace,
In Fort La Tour, stockaded, bastioned, bold,
The great seignorial captain's chief stronghold,

She long withstood the plunderer Charnisay,
Her husband's enemy, who night and day,
Camped near the walls, with cat-like, covetous eyes
Sought the small force that held it to surprise.

Denys has told us that with breaking heart
She stood, compelled to bear a witness' part
As, trapped at last by fiendish treachery,
Her faithful soldiers were led out to die.

Then wrung with pain, with eyes forever blind
To sights of joy, through desolate days she pined,
Till where the tides fall tremulous on the shore
She slept, the heroic wife of Charles La Tour.

Whence came she to Acadia, what her name,
Live her French forefathers in rolls of fame,
Why braved she wild, tempestuous ocean floods,
To find rude shelter in these homeless woods?

Our questions echo 'gainst unanswering skies,
The forests, too, guard well their mysteries;
But Acadie's traditions would be poor
Without the memory of Dame La Tour.

Devoted woman, Greece and Rome of old
Admiring tales of their great daughters told,
And shall we let thy name be lost among
The multitudes whose lives go all unsung?

Ah no, beside the stern New Brunswick strand
And through the length of this delightful land
Thou shalt be well remembered; even the sea
Shall sing continuous requiem for thee.