The Vengeance 
 of Noel Brassard 
 
 A Tale of the 
 Acadian Expulsion 
 
 By 
 
 Bliss Carman 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Sara Bard Field Wood 
 

The Vengeance of 
 Noel Brassard 
 
 A Tale of the Acadian Expulsion 
 
 By 
 Bliss Carman 
 
GIFT 
 
To J. H. B. and E. W. R. 
 
 Wheyi I was very young and small, 
 You held me in your arms ; 
 Before that I could walk at all, 
 I learned your gentlest charms. 
 
 When I was just a little chap, 
 And could nt say a thing, 
 Tou used to take me in your lap 
 And talk to me and sing. 
 
 929 
 
Now I can make up my own songs 
 And go about alone , 
 
 And hear strange tales in foreign tongues 
 Of people not my own ; 
 
 Tet all the new alluring strains. 
 Wherever I may go> 
 Are blended with the old refrains 
 That sound of long ago. 
 
The Vengeance of 
 Noel Brassard 
 
 YOU say we English like to boast 
 Of our fair play and British pluck. 
 Well, here 's a tale for you who toast 
 Your toes and wish your friends good luck, 
 This snowy Christmas time. 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 YOU take our soft Acadian land 
 In summer for your thoroughfare; 
 One of the gardens from God's hand, 
 Orchard and dike, it greets you there — 
 A dream of the world's prime. 
 
 BUT winter, when the snow comes down 
 From the red edges of the fall, 
 To cover babbling stream and town 
 With velvet silence like a pall, 
 Can you guess what it means ? 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 \ ■■ ' v 1 '■■' "..'i- 1 L-; '■" ",: r '■■••• ■■• ■ ■• ■ s 
 
 THE rivers sleep ; the sun is lost; 
 And in the deep woods now and then 
 Some great tree, riving in the frost, 
 Cracks, and the stillness falls again 
 Among the evergreens. 
 
 BUT one man learned too well who prowls 
 Those wintry barrens choked with snow, 
 And guessed what manner of thing cowls 
 Its empty visage from man so, 
 Seeing that face too near. 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 THE Shadow Hunter, whose long stride 
 Mortal has yet to tire or tame, 
 Like moonbeam over mountain side 
 Following round the world — whose name 
 Men hold their breath to hear. 
 
 AND yet, they say, he has a word 
 Sweeter than any save the sea, 
 To summon those who once have heard 
 Beyond the bourns of misery. 
 Though one man doubted, I must think. 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 NOEL BRASSARD, named Beausoleil, 
 That lovely fall ... It was the year 
 The English traitor did betray 
 His king and honor; far and near 
 He made his hapless province drink 
 
 THE dregs of sorrow ; blood and bone, 
 He ground them into dust between 
 The upper and the nether stone, 
 The French and English. Wide and green 
 The farms lay in the sun ; 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 THE apples hung in scarlet ropes 
 And golden clusters ; the ripe grain 
 Went billowing up the mountain slopes ; 
 And over running dike and plain 
 The thousand cattle one by one 
 
 TRAILED their long shadows by the sea. 
 Grand Pre, Port Royal, Tantramar, 
 Minas and Shubenacadie, 
 Cobequid, Beausejour, Canard, 
 Melanson, Aulac, and Pereau. 
 
 8 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 WHAT easier than, simple folk 
 Fearing the majesty of law, 
 To scatter them as the slow smoke 
 Is scattered on a windy flaw, 
 From Beaubassin to Gaspereau ? 
 
 PLUCK them and set them down the world- 
 A second St. Bartholomew — 
 Leaving the land whence they are hurled 
 For Lawrence and his pirate crew, 
 Which we enjoy to-day ! 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 NOEL BRASSARD stood by his door, 
 And there was haste. The last to flee, 
 When brand was set to granary floor, 
 House, barn, and church, in Chipoudy, 
 That fall, must for a moment stay, 
 
 LOADING his cart to climb the crest 
 The sun at Michaelmas just clears. 
 His wife with her tenth child at breast, 
 His mother with her ninety years — 
 Safe now and half-way up the hill. 
 
 10 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 AND there they halted ; the red sun 
 Crimsoned the fir-tops over them ; 
 Below they saw the great tide run 
 Between the grassy dikes that hem 
 The meadows, when the rivers fill 
 
 F 
 
 ROM Fundy like a sluice. They saw 
 Their windows in the sunset glare, 
 Then the first smoke of burning straw 
 
 Steal from a rick and burst and flare. 
 
 But soft ! What ails you, mother Brassard ? 
 
 ii 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 WHAT fancy shakes your age? "My son, 
 I shall not go with you, for I 
 Am dying, and my strength is done ; 
 And by your father I shall lie, 
 Where the white crosses are, 
 
 THIS night." They listened. She was 
 dead. 
 (The record is La Guerne's, the priest 
 Who buried her.) And as she said, 
 It happened; the first soul released 
 Upon that march with Death ! 
 
 12 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 AT night two figures, digging late 
 For safety, had brought to a close 
 • Their pious work ; the graveyard gate 
 Creaked on its hinges ; the moon rose ; 
 And the white valley held its breath. 
 
 AH, Beausoleil, before you now 
 The wilderness ; and by your side 
 The shadowy Walker of the Snow, 
 To journey with you, stride for stride, 
 On many a drifted valley floor ! 
 
 13 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 BEHIND you, worse than Death can do ! 
 As dust upon the stream is spilled, 
 The wreckage of your kin shall strew 
 The shores of the world. The land they tilled, 
 A politician's prize of war. 
 
 SMALL choice, Brassard! Your folk are 
 sown 
 To the four winds ; to men henceforth 
 From Baton Rouge to Blomidon, 
 Labrador and the unpeopled North, 
 "Acadian" is an exile's name. 
 
 m 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 HE chose the wildernees. Be sure 
 There is a record of that trail 
 From sounding Fundy to Chaleur, 
 In the great map that does not fail ! 
 Yet now we only read, he came 
 
 TO the blue Restigouche with spring. 
 Under their ice-floors did he hear 
 Tobique and Napadogan sing, 
 And Mamozekel whisper clear 
 Secrets not good to know ? 
 
 *5 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 BY Villebon's fort did he press on, 
 Where dwell the unwarlike Melecites 
 By the great route of the St. John, 
 In boreal colds and summer heats, 
 From Nerepis to Cabineau ? 
 
 OR was his way by the North Shore, 
 Far up to lonely Tracadie, 
 Where the sand islands hear the roar 
 Of the great gulf, and Miramichi 
 Slows to meet the tide ? 
 
 16 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 DID the Sevogle see him flit, 
 A gray and haggard shape of woe? — 
 Or the headlong Nepisiguit, 
 Where the Basque sailor long ago 
 Wedded his Mohawk bride? 
 
 HE saw in the long solemn night 
 The giant lanterns of the sky 
 Streaming about the pole, to light 
 His haunted trail. Nay, Beausoleil, 
 Dark was your sunshine then ! 
 
 *7 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 AND always at the dusk of day, 
 Out of the brushwood, pace for pace, 
 Would come to join them on the way 
 The One whose snowshoes left no trace, 
 They knew not whence nor when. 
 
 MOTHER and children, one by one, 
 He bade the strangers stay with him ; 
 And they stayed. Beausoleil went on, 
 With reeling mind and senses dim, 
 One — three — five — nine — 
 
 18 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 HE saw them smile and close their eyes^ 
 As the tall Spectre of the cold 
 Detained them by some wooded rise. 
 Then sink to sleep within the fold 
 Of moonlit drift and shine. 
 
 IN the first breaking-up of spring, 
 To the blue Restigouche there came, 
 With two pale children following 
 Upon his heels, his eyes like flame, 
 In the gaunt semblance of a man, 
 
 19 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 NOEL BRASSARD. Say, rather, one 
 Who had looked horror in the face, 
 And the bleak goblin had undone 
 The latches of his soul. Yet trace 
 Of hunter's skill to scheme and plan 
 
 WAS left, — the mind to hunt and hound 
 His persecutors from the land. 
 A frenzy at the very sound 
 Of English names would twitch his hand 
 To let the flintlock's hammer fall. 
 
 20 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 BEFORE he died on D'Anjac's roll, 
 By thronged stockade and lonely hut 
 He marked them ; never missed a soul ; 
 And nicked them on his musket butt 
 Twenty and eight in all. 
 
 THAT is the story straight and plain. 
 Because one Englishman could pawn 
 His country's honor for mere gain, 
 More need we English should not fawn 
 On Truth to cloak his crime. 
 
 21 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 
 TOO simple your Acadian heart, 
 My Noel, and too late you strove ! 
 Not in the world was your fit part. 
 Yet peace ! The world moves on to love, 
 This snowy Christmas time. 
 
 22 
 
OF NOEL BRASSARD 
 
 ONE HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED BY 
 WILL BRADLEY AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 CAMBRIDGE," MASSACHUSETTS, IN DECEM- 
 BER, MDCCCCXIX, FOR BLISS CARMAN 
 
 *3 
 

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 University of California • Berkeley 
 
 BREN