The Bard In the Forest Primeval, Across the Plains, In the Swamps.....

"This is the forest primeval," and "Still stands the forest primeval." What an old, dark, mossy green sound these lines of Longfellow's "Evangeline" have.

Evangeline is separated from her Gabriel on what was to be her wedding day. Forced out of their homes by British troops and placed upon boats, they like so many of the Accadian diaspora are split apart from family and loved ones. Many of those that survived the journey and were allowed entry into the United States settled in the deep south, becoming what we call Cajuns.

But Evangeline devotes her life, traversing this country in search of Gabriel, always missing him, never finding him, until returning to the place she began; Philadelphia. And there, old and gray, ministering to those dying of a plague, she finally finds him.

When reading this beautiful piece of North American history it must be wondered who or what Evangeline is. She is more than a person. She, as her name indicates, is an evangelist. But even more than that, she is this country. She is the land, she is the people. I wonder if she is a prophet or only a forgotten memory.

"Thus did the long sad years glide on, and in seasons and places
Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden;-
Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek Moravian Missions,
Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army,
Now in the secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities.
Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered.
Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.
Each succeeding year stole something from her beauty,
Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow.
Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er her
forehead,
Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly horizon,
As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline," Part 2, IV)

"Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder,
Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder
Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from
her fingers,
And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning.
Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish,
That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows.
On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man.
Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples;
But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment
Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood;
So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying,
Hot and red on is lips still burned the flush of the fever,
As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals,
That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over.
Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted
Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the dark-
ness,
Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking.
Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,
Heard he the cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded
Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like,
"Gabriel! O my beloved!"........" ("Evangeline," Part 2, V)