Who is evangeline longfellow poem

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?

Anthology included. Buy How to Read a Poem Now! This is just unbelievable the meeting, the supposed edict, the deportation. And yet oh so believable—and awful. The power of the written word continues to shine a light on what can be too quickly forgotten. It was on the coast, convenient for ship captains to dump off debtors. Love this! Thanks for the back story and the great information! Your email address will not be published. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.

You can also subscribe without commenting. Patron Love. Author Recent Posts. Follow Glynn. Glynn Young. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's first epic poem, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie , published in , is a story of loss and devotion set against the deportation of the Acadian people in The poem elevated Longfellow to be the most famous writer in America and has had a lasting cultural impact, especially in Nova Scotia and Louisiana, where most of the poem is set.

On April 5, , Longfellow invited a few friends to dine at his rented rooms in Cambridge at the Craigie House. Nathaniel Hawthorne brought the Reverend Horace Conolly with him.

At dinner, Conolly related a tale he had heard from a French-Canadian woman about an Acadian couple separated on their wedding day by the British expulsion of the French-speaking inhabitants of Nova Scotia.

Conolly had hoped Hawthorne would take the story and turn it into a novel, but he was not interested. Longfellow, however, was intrigued, and reportedly called the story, "the best illustration of faithfulness and the constancy of woman that I have ever heard of or read.

Seven years after Longfellow first heard the story, Evangeline was published. During that time, he continued his Harvard professorship and published several books, including volumes of his own poetry, translations, and a novel, Hyperion. He also married Frances Fanny Appleton, became the owner of Craigie House when her father gave it to the newlyweds as a wedding gift, and had three children, the third christened two days before the official publication of Evangeline.

Conolly spoke of a legend that one of his parishioners had told him about a displaced Acadian woman spending her entire life traveling in search of her lost lover. Hawthorne consented.

However, several years followed before Longfellow actually commenced writing. Evangeline is a poem with an epic scope. Its protagonist spends decades searching for her lost lover, traveling a route created by Longfellow that encompasses a large part of what was the United States and its territories.

Longfellow initially planned to write a shorter poem, to include an expansive description of the idyllic, pre-expulsion life in Acadia, segueing into the tragic closing death-bed scene with Gabriel in Philadelphia. As a student of world literatures, Longfellow was well aware of the traditions of epic narratives in other languages and of the perception that the United States, not yet one hundred years old as a country, had not produced any truly worthwhile literature of its own.

Perhaps this influenced him in his conception of Evangeline as an epic saga. While many others — including his wife Fanny and his close friend Charles Sumner - questioned his choice to use a meter with which many English speaking readers would not be familiar, Longfellow never deviated from his own opinion. Longfellow competed his first draft of Evangeline on his fortieth birthday, February 27, The poem underwent several months of review and revision before being published on November 1st.

While Longfellow did his writing alone, he welcomed collaboration in this final polishing stage, relying upon local friends whose opinion he valued and whom he felt understood what he was trying to achieve with the poem. Future U. Felton and Folsom, in particular, had a great deal of input into the final draft.