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Evangeline and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

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The 1995 Dover paperback EVANGELINE AND OTHER POEMS is a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sampler. It contains ten poems or excerpts, both narrative and lyric. The 1847 narrative EVANGELINE takes up over 80% of the total text. This is not a critical edition. It has only one introductory note, with special attention to the dactylic hexameter verse used by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in both EVANGELINE and THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH. The author's best known example of the dactylic hexameter verse in English (lifted not always happily from classical Greek and Latin) is the first line of EVANGELINE:

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks..."

This review is about only the poem EVANGELINE: A TALE OF ACADIE.

EVANGELINE is as much a religious poem as Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven" or Gerard Manley Hopkins's "The Wreck of the Deutschland" or "Margaret, Are You Grieving." Like the ILIAD, EVANGELINE's message is that, come what may, the will of God will be done. And like Saint John's Gospel, the message of Longfellow's poem is that God's will can mean that a hero or heroine must undergo undeserved suffering.

The poem begins on the peaceful French speaking shores of Maritime Canada in the autumn of 1755. Generations earlier, rugged pioneers had emigrated from Normandy and wrested a living from Acadia (today's Nova Scotia) on difficult lands bordering the ferocious tides of the Bay of Fundy. Richest of the farmers of the little village of Grand-Pre is the 70 year old widower Benedict Bellefontaine. He has a 17-year old daughter Evangeline. In the evening their engagement to marry is solemnly inscribed by the local notary. Next morning father and daughter open their house to receive the congratulations of neighbors.

Why have British ships anchored offshore the past four days? At noon the men of Grand-Pre find out; they are summoned to assemble in the church by the British military governor, where they are made prisoners pending deportation. On national security grounds they are informed that every last Acadian will be shipped off to British colonies to the South. For France still controls the St. Lawrence River, Quebec, Montreal and much else and Britain regards the conquered Acadians as an alien, disloyal threat to the English-speaking colonies. All Acadian property is forfeit to the Crown. All houses are burned to the ground. Among the men held prisoner are Evangeline's fiance Gabriel Lajeunesse and his anti-British blacksmith father Basil.

The Acadians are essentially apolitical. If the British leave them and their Catholic religion in peace, they are too busy farming and fishing to go to war for or against anybody. But their priest says that somehow this forced migration is the will of God, undeserved and unjust though it be. They must accept it patiently.

A second tragedy is that the deported Acadians are hustled higgledy-piggledy onto the waiting British vessels. Father is separated from daughter, husband from wife, grandparents from grandchildren. Evangeline's father dies of shock on the beach. Like thousands of other Acadians, Evangeline and Gabriel are herded onto different ships and exiled to different colonies. Only Maryland gives any of its Catholic coreligionists something resembling Christian hospitality: not New York, not Virginia. In a few years Spanish Louisiana invites the "Cajuns" to come populate the bayoux. Gabriel and his father migrate to the humid plains of southwestern Louisiana, "the prairies of fair Opelousas." Evangeline, her guide Father Felician from Grand-Pre, and others travel later down the Mississippi following rumors that Gabriel and Basil have settled amid "the lakes of the Atchafalaya." Father and son were indeed there. But Gabriel despairs of ever finding Evangeline and hours before she arrives, sets off as helmsman on a light craft for the American northwest.

"Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and restless,
Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow."

He passes near an unseen Evangeline.

Father Felician and Evangeline come to the comfortable house of Basil, now a wealthy Spanish herdsman. He has sent Gabriel to trade with the Spanish and then trap in the Ozarks. Though Basil promises and delivers a rapid pursuit of the just departed Gabriel, the latter is never quite found. Meanwhile Basil Lajeunesse delivers a paean to the glories of the new Acadia that is much quoted around Lafayette, Louisiana in the 21st Century's revival of all things French Canadian in those parts:

"Here no hungry winter congeals our blood like the rivers;
Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer,"

Alone in the evening Evangeline wanders along forest paths, relishing the fact that they have been so often trod by Gabriel. Here is a new Eden and she is a new Eve. All that is lacking is her Adam; and the trees whisper "tomorrow" and "patience."

Together Basil and Evangeline learn at the Spanish horse-trading town of Adayes that they had missed Gabriel by only one day. Together they strike out after him into the vast prairies. A violently widowed Indian woman tells Evangeline tales of phantom lovers and Evangeline begins to wonder if she, too, is pursuing a phantom. A Jesuit missionary priest informs them that Gabriel had been with him only six days earlier. He had told the sad story of himself and Evangeline then pushed on. But he promised to return to the mission in the autumn when the hunt was done. So Evangeline lingers there. Week follows week through the seasons:

"Patience!" the priest would say, "have faith, and thy prayer will be answered!"

Decades later, no longer beautiful, Evangeline consciously ceased her search. She felt the call of a new life in William Penn's Philadelphia. Love previously stored up for Gabriel she now showered on strangers.

"Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others,
This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her."

Evangeline Bellefontaine next followed her Savior for many years as a Sister of Mercy. She became an angel of the poor, a precursor, if you like, of Mother Teresa. Then pestilence struck Philadelphia. On a Saturday morning in summer, Evangeline brought flowers to comfort the dying poor in the almshouse. Suddenly she cried in anguish as she recognized in a nearly dead old man the Gabriel of her youth. For one brief moment her cry and her face returned Adam to the Garden of Eden. The long search was finally over and with it ended the longing that could never be satisfied on this earth.

"And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom,
Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee!"

Gabriel and Evangeline lie side by side, unnoticed, in the small Catholic graveyard of Philadelphia. Other hearts ache. Other hands toil. Thousands of feet plod by. But Gabriel and his Evangeline have completed their journey.

In Canada some few French exiles have trickled back to Acadia and Bel-Pre, including maidens

"And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story."

What was God's plan for these two? Why did Evangeline follow Gabriel so faithfully while he fled ever farther away from his happiness? The poem does not say. -OOO-

This Dover Thrift Edition makes an economical and convenient introduction to the work of Heendry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), the American poet who sort of provided the antithesis to Walt Whitman by always looking back to the continental European canon in writing verse on American themes. The volume contains his long poem "Evangeline" and is rounded out with 9 shorter poems.

"Evangeline" (1847) is a long poem in dactylic hexameters on the expulsion of the Acadians, the French settlers of Nova Scotia who were forced out by the British in 1755. The poem opens with a depiction of happy life in an Acadian village, around the time that the lovely maiden Evangeline is betrothed to the handsome blacksmith's son Gabriel. Immediately after, the British military comes in, and the couple are separated. Evangeline spends long years searching for Gabriel from Louisiana to Michigan and on to Philadelphia. Besides reminding his contemporary readers of the historical tragedy of the Acadian expulsion, "Evangeline" seems to be Longfellow's tribute to the North American continent and its diversity from the chilly zones of eastern Canada to the feverish bayous of the Cajun land. I enjoyed the plot, and Longfellow is to be praised for successfully creating a long poem in English in dactylic hexameters, as this metre is not at all appropriate for English. I was surprised to see that dactylic hexameter lacks a certain gestalt that other metres have; I love to memorize verse, but little of "Evangeline" could be committed to memory when written in this verse form.

Little of the remaining poems in this volume appeal to me, as I'm not a big fan of typical English rhymed poetry of this period. Nonetheless, "The Cross of Snow", which Longfellow wrote in memory of his second wife, is quite moving. "Divina Commedia", a series of six sonnets the poet wrote while translating Dante, have some interesting metaphors.

I got this book of poems for the title piece, Evangeline, which is the romantic story of young lovers separated by politics. Evangeline is the name of the young woman, who spends her life hunting for her lover but finds him too late. This work was written in a poetic form called dactylic hexameter, which is the epic style of poetry used by the ancient Greeks in works like The Iliad and The Odyssey to treat subjects of war and epic journeys, and this form, with its tight construction and singing cadence, is a good one to treat the subject of star-crossed lovers. The poem is a paean to one woman's faithfulness and loyalty and follows her journey over thousands of miles and scores of years as she searches for her man. This was written over a hundred years ago and is a bit overwrought to modern sensibilities; I have heard that it is still taught to middle schoolers in the Atlantic Northeast, and I can see why. The language reaches and yearns, the poetic form is tight and constrictive, and the subject matter would appeal to a young person's sense of the grandiose. That said, I as a middle-aged man still enjoyed the poem, and the other poems in this collection. It reminded me a bit of Romeo and Juliet in its ambition and sweep. I wanted Evangeline to find her guy and get her life together and was appropriately sorrowful when it didn't work out for her. I like stories of star-crossed lovers every once in a while, and this fit the bill nicely. The dactylic hexameter form was a little weird to get used to at first but grew on me as I got a feel for the rhythym of it, and I've since read other poems in this form, though I think this was the best of the bunch. This poem won a lot of attention in its day and continues to entertain today. If you're looking for something a little different from what you're used to and don't mind trying an older form, this poem (and the others in this book) will reward your efforts with a good read.

I was interested in reading Evangeline and a few other Longfellow poems. This was PERFECT. I bought it used and it was in good condition.Evangeline and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)