Evangeline

Step right up, dear reader, and prepare for an emotional journey through Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline — the only epic poem that dares to ask: What if soulmates were separated by an 18th-century deportation and a truly relentless sense of poetic metre?

Published in 1847, Evangeline tells the sweeping, heart-wrenching, slow-burning (very slow-burning) tale of a lovely Acadian lass named Evangeline and her beloved Gabriel. They're young, in love, and — in classic tragic fashion — immediately torn apart by history, fate and some seriously inconsiderate British soldiers.

What follows is one of the most beautifully written wild goose chases in literary history. Evangeline roams the wilds of colonial America — through forests, bayous, and bustling towns — for decades, looking for Gabriel like he’s the last biscuit in New England. It’s a love story powered by pure endurance and impeccable hair, told entirely in dactylic hexametre — a poetic form so rhythmic you could tap dance to the heartbreak.

Along the way, you’ll encounter:

• Noble peasants with names you can’t pronounce,
• Landscapes described in at least seven adjectives each,
• And the poetic equivalent of shouting “GABRIEL!!!” into the wind for 100 pages.

This is romantic tragedy in slow motion, like The Notebook with more fur traders and fewer flashbacks. Longfellow took a footnote from history — the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia — and turned it into a sprawling, lyrical, deeply American tale of love lost, found, and then lost again just for good measure.

So pack your emotional resilience, lace up your poetic snowshoes, and dive into Evangeline: where every stanza is scenic, every reunion is tragically mistimed, and the moral of the story seems to be "never trust history to mind its own business".

(The poem is set during the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians. See also the Acadian Cross)

Contents

Line
1	Introduction
	PART THE FIRST
20	I
148	II
268	III
382	IV
524	V
	PART THE SECOND
666	I
742	II
888	III
1078	IV
1252	V