You know... you would have thought that this is something I should have read already. I'm a Cajun. My dad traced our ancestors back to Grand-Pre and to France. In fact we went to France a couple of years back and found the home of some of our ancestors that after fleeing Grand-Pre resettled in central France. I grew up in the swamps of Louisiana after my great-great-great... grandfather fled south. This is about my culture and I overlooked this gem for 47 years.

Well, it was a good read, though sad. Saturday I lounged on the couch and read it not once but twice. Beautifully written; the imagery in high definition.

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Suddenly rose from the south a light,
as in autumn the blood-red

Moon climbs the crystal walls of
heaven, and o'er the horizon

Titan-like stretches its hundred hands
upon mountain and meadow,

Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and
piling huge shadows together.

Broader and ever broader it gleamed
on the roofs of the village.

Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and
the ships that lay in the roadstead.

Columns of shining smoke uprose, and
flashes of flame were

Thrust through their folds and withdrawn,
like the quivering hands of a martyr.

Then as the wind seized the gleeds and
the burning thatch, and, uplifting,

Whirled them aloft through the air, at
once from a hundred house-tops

Started the sheeted smoke with flashes
of flame intermingled.

These things beheld in dismay the
crowd on the shore and on shipboard.

Speechless at first they stood, then
cried aloud in their anguish,

"We shall behold no more our homes
in the village of Grand-Pre!" ( )