HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, Boston: William D. Ticknor & Company, 1847

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, Boston: William D. Ticknor & Company, 1847

In this sentimental poem, Longfellow follows the lifelong quest of Evangeline, a young woman separated from her lost love Gabriel by the Acadian Expulsion from Atlantic Canada in the 1750s. Scorning didacticism, Poe would have found the pious ending of this poem hard to take:

All was ended now, the hope, and the fear,
     and the sorrow,
All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied
     longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of
     patience!
And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head
     to her bosom,
Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured,
    “Father, I thank thee!”

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts