Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie
[In the following review, the author summarizes the plot of Evangeline and provides analysis of Longfellow's use of hexameter.]
A poem from Longfellow is sure to be welcomed, and what is better, is sure to be read; unless indeed it is a drama. Evangeline is a simple story, prettily told in a novel style of verse. The incidents and the personages—we can hardly call them characters—are few. The story opens about 1655, in Nova Scotia, or Acadie. The French inhabitants of that colony were a quiet, agricultural race. They lived in great harmony together, forming a community in which simplicity, piety and friendship ruled. They were so pure in their morals that, since the foundation of their colony, there had been no instance where a woman had lost her honor. When a young man married, the colony joined to build him a house.
Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,
Dwelt in love to God and man. Alike were they free from
Fear that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics.
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows;
But their dwellings were open as day, and the hearts of the owners.
There the richest was poor, and the poor lived in abundance.
By the peace of Utrecht the country had been ceded by the French to the English. The Acadians, however, at their own desire, were permitted to be considered as neutrals between these powers. Still their origin, their language and their religion, all bound them to the French. It is not strange, therefore, that when hostilities again arose between these two nations, the Acadians at first secretly, and at last, at the siege of Beau Sejour, openly aided their countrymen. Irritated by this, the English government determined to remove the Acadians from their homes, and to transport them to the different English colonies. For this purpose an English fleet was sent, sufficiently powerful to prevent resistance.
While this fleet is lying in the mouth of the Gaspereau, and before the intention of the government is known, Benedict Bellefontaine, the father of Evangeline, “the wealthiest farmer of Grand Pre,” meets at his house with Basil, the blacksmith, to betroth Evangeline with Gabriel, the blacksmith's son. Gabriel and Evangeline,
from earliest childhood
Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician,
Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters,
Out of the self-same book.
Together in childhood,
Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle,
Down the hill-side bounding, they glided away o'er the meadow.
Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters,
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow
Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings.
The marriage contract is signed; the old men discuss the meaning of the order issued by the English commander that all the men of the village are to meet on the morrow in the church; and at last, after a friendly game at draughts, Basil and his son leave, and the farmer's household retire to rest. Morning comes and brings with it the merry feast of betrothal. At noon the unsuspecting villagers assemble in the church, and learn to their terror the stern resolve of the English government. Escape is impossible, for the church is guarded by soldiers. After a few days the women and children are assembled on the shore, and the imprisoned men are marched down from the church, still under guard. The embarkation proceeds; but grief is too much for the old farmer; he dies and is buried on the shore. The ships with the exiles sail away,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins.
In the confusion attending this sad expulsion, families were separated; part were carried to one colony, and part to another. Husband was torn from wife, parent from child, brother from sister. Thus in many instances to the pain of exile was added deeper suffering, severing of the deeper ties of life. “It was the hardest case,” said one of the sufferers, “which had happened since our Saviour was on earth.” The colony thus torn from its native soil, and transplanted into other countries, never took root again. Broken hearted, and yet cherishing in their sorrow the hope that the chances of war would at some time restore them to their beloved Acadie, these exiles never mingled with the colonists among whom they were distributed, nor, for the most part, pursued any business. In the end, some found their way to France, and to Canada, and other French colonies; but the greater part died in poverty, in the countries to which they had been transported, “strangers in a strange land.”
Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the church yards.
To return to Evangeline. Her only support now is Father Felician and her heart's deep love. For in the embarkation, Basil and Gabriel have been separated from herself and the priest; and have been carried she knows not where. Her life's task is to seek for them. Every hope in her life has been at once blighted; and yet she cannot relinquish all hope.
Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfinished,
As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine,
Suddenly paused in the sky, and fading, slowly descended
Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen.
A rumor that Gabriel and his father have found a new home in the west carries her with Father Felician, in company with some others of the Acadian exiles to the great Mississippi. They float down its turbulent waters, and at last
Slowly they entered the Têche where it flows through the green Opelousas,
And through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland,
Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling.
Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle.
Here they find Basil prosperous and contented: but Gabriel, restless as Evangeline herself, has on the very day of their arrival, set out for the town of Adayes, and thence is going to hunt among the Indians. His boat had met and passed hers, unseen, on the river. The next morning, with fresh hope, Evangeline proceeds, with Basil, to overtake Gabriel; but she meets with fresh disappointment. Everywhere she hears of Gabriel a little in advance, but she cannot overtake him.
Sometimes they saw or thought they saw the smoke of his camp fire
Rise in the morning air from the distant plain; but at nightfall,
When they had reached the place they found only embers and ashes.
At last they reach the Catholic Mission among the Ozark mountains; and there they learn that Gabriel has been gone but a week, and that he will return in the autumn. Evangeline remains at the Mission, and Basil returns home. But Gabriel does not come; and Evangeline again sets forth to find him,—a hopeless, ever-disappointing, task.
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 away 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.
For her, thus heart broken, what better refuge than to become a Sister of Mercy—to carry to others the relief which she cannot find for herself? In the city of Penn, therefore,
Where the streets still reëcho the names of the trees of the forest.
she enters upon this humble and holy duty.
Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watchmen repeated
Loud through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city,
High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper.
Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs,
Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruit for the market,
Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings.
At length, in a season of pestilence, amid the dying wretches who are crowded into the almshouse, in the form of an old man with thin, gray locks, she finds her long sought Gabriel. He turns his last look upon her and dies.
All is 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.
Such is the story of Evangeline; one of great beauty, however much it may suffer in this sketch of it. The poem is not of the highest class; there is no character portrayed, except that of Evangeline, and hers was nothing distinctive. But the beauty of the poem is in its graceful description, and its happy comparisons verging something on prettinesses. As an instance of these last, we venture, perhaps at some hazard with our lady readers, to give the following:
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Longfellow has, before this,
Called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in Earth's firmament do shine.
And, as that thought was not claimed to be his own, it was not worth while to attempt to make it his by reversing it; as a thief might turn a stolen coat wrong side out.
More beautiful, in our judgment, is the description of the Indian summer in Acadie, rich as it is with pastoral images; of the voyagers down the Mississippi; of the western residence of Basil; of the wondrous prairies.
Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine,
Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas.
Over them wander the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck;
Over them wander wolves, and herds of riderless horses;
Fires that blast and blight and winds that are weary with travel.
And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven,
Live the protecting hand of God inverted above them.
But we have not room to select more passages. We can only hope that those which we have given will prevent any one from being deterred from the perusal of the volume by the unusual metre in which it is written, the classic hexameter.
There is another view in which we wish to consider this poem; and that is as an attempt to introduce this metre into English verse. Longfellow is not the first who has made this attempt. As long ago as the Elizabethan age, Sir Philip Sydney used this metre himself, and encouraged its use in the writings of others. His hexameters, however, and those of his followers, were not, and never could have become, popular, for reasons which we will hereafter endeavor to explain. In modern times hexameters have been used by our poets with greater, but as yet not with general success. Coleridge wrote a few fragments in this measure, and Southey employed it in his Vision of Judgment. Longfellow himself, following the metre of the original, translated Teguer's Children of the Lord's Supper into, what he calls, “the inexorable hexameter.”
But the metre is not yet naturalized in our language; and it is still a hazardous experiment to make it the vehicle of poetry. To use an expressive, though not very polished, phrase, English readers have not yet “got the hang of it.” Both the Latinist and the mere English scholar are puzzled by a metre, which is unlike anything with which either of them are familiar. Indeed it is difficult to say whether an English hexameter sounds more strangely to a classical or to an unclassical ear. Regular blank verse is the only metre without rhyme, which is familiar to one, whose acquaintance with the forms of poetry is confined to our own language. Southey's Thalaba and Shelley's Queen Mab seem to him, in their forms, to be very little more than melodious prose; like, though inferior to, those noble passages of the Psalms, in which the glorious sunlight of the thought shines through the clouds of a prose translation. He is then quite bewildered, when he finds a poem, without rhyme, in which the lines are of different lengths, and each contains more than ten syllables. To add to his perplexity, he is more conversant with iambic metre than with any other. Hence he cannot readily appreciate the dactylic rhythm of the hexameter. He opens Evangeline and reads thus:
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks;
and he sees at once that, thus read, it has indeed “the forced gait of a shuffling nag.” Even if, by a little perseverance, he becomes somewhat familiar with the measure, yet he is very likely to read the poem with a continual grumble at such an awkward metre.
With different but equally strong prejudices the classic scholar takes up the book. Familiar with the melody of Homeric verse, he looks for the same here, with the added charm of a native language. He forgets for the moment the principles of English versification, and expects to find long syllables and short syllables, and, in brief, the application of all those rules of Latin prosody, which were whipped into him at school, and by which alone, he supposes, hexameters can be constructed. When then he finds that the lines before him are governed by none of these rules, he curls up his lips at English hexameters, and says that a line of Virgil is worth a thousand of them.
A measure better known would undoubtedly have made this poem more generally popular; still we are glad that Longfellow has made this experiment. It is only by such experiments that a new metre can be introduced into our language; and certainly the hexameter, if it can be made familiar to English ears, will enrich the language with a very melodious and very flexible metre; entirely different in its character from our ordinary blank verse, and perhaps having an advantage over it in one respect. Ordinary blank verse is so consonant with the genius of our language, that, with slight alterations, the most common prose can be turned into verse. Thus we may take a passage from our author's preface to a volume of his poems, (though this, it is true, is not common prose,) and, by the aid of the italicized words, make verse of it thus:
And now the northern lights begin to burn
Faintly at first, like sunbeams playing soft
Within the waters of the deep, blue sea.
For the same reason it is difficult for even a skillful reader, except by awkward pauses, to show the termination of the lines, even in Milton's majestic verse; and still more so in the looser measure of modern poets. It is this, we may remark by the way, which may have led to the general and popular use of rhyme, marking as it does to the ear, the close of each line. The dactylic rhythm of the hexameter however, and the cadence of its last two feet, make it very different from English prose, and mark the verse as perfectly to the ear as to the eye.
It is our object in the remainder of this article to consider the attempt to introduce this metre into our language, and the principles which should govern it.
The Latin and Greek hexameter, like the other metres of those languages, was based upon the quantity, that is the length and shortness of the syllables. With this English metre has no connection. That regards only accented and unaccented syllables. Indeed in English it is often difficult to say whether a syllable is long or short. If we take the rules of Latin prosody as a test, we should find few short syllables; so seldom is there a vowel not followed by two consonants. Though there is this difference in the two systems of prosody, yet it should be observed that when an English scholar reads Latin verse, (and we select Latin as more easy of illustration) and wishes to show, or even to enjoy its melody, he reads it as if it were constructed upon the English system. The melody arising from the quantity of the syllables he can not appreciate; he must have that which comes from accent. Thus he would read,
Sícelidés Musaé, pauló majóra canàmus:
Nón omnés arbústa juvánt humilésve myrícæ.
And so he must read if he would have the lines sound melodious; although such reading violates the rules of Latin accent. It may be that such reading would have sounded harshly in Cicero's ears; but it is certainly the most melodious mode of reading hexameters which is in our power. So little does the quantity of the syllables affect the metre to our ears, that
Sícelidés Musé, pauló majóra cantímus
Nón omnés arbúta juvánt humilésve myrícæ.
would be known to be bad lines, not by the effect on the ear, but by our knowledge of prosody. To one unacquainted with Latin, they would seem as correct, and perhaps as melodious, as the former couplet; and although the Latin scholar would detect the false quantity, he would do so by his head and not by his ear.
We would not deny that it may be possible for a well-trained scholar so to read Latin hexameters as to make them musical to modern ears, while he expresses the quantity by his voice, and yet observes the ordinary rules of modern Latin pronunciation. It is enough for our purpose that to the great body of those who read, or have read, Virgil and Ovid, and other classic poets, the enjoyment of the metre arises and has arisen from the mode of reading which we have pointed out. It is through such persons, if at all, that hexameters must become popular in our language.
As a collateral illustration of our meaning, we may quote that noble old monkish hymn,
Dies iræ! dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favillà,
Teste David cum Sibyllà.
Barbarous as this metre is when tested by the principles of Latin versification which governed classic poets, still to an English reader it is melodious and regular trochaic verse. A person unacquainted with Latin might make dies a monosyllable; but with this exception he would readily catch the rhythm. So too the Latin scholar can enjoy in these lines the modern metre of accent.
If we are correct in these remarks, it follows that there is nothing in the difference between the systems of Latin and of English versification which need prevent the introduction into English of the Latin hexameter. Goldsmith very truly said, that “it is impossible that the same measure, composed of the same times, should have a good effect upon the ear in one language and a bad effect in another.” If, therefore, as we think we have shown, the Latin hexameter is pleasing when it is read according to the English system, marking its feet by accent and not by quantity; then hexameters may be constructed in English verse, which shall have the same pleasing effect. It may however be thought that the sounds of the Latin language are so different from those of the English, that there is no analogy between them in this respect. But a little examination will show that this difference is not very great. Of the fifteen syllables in
Arma virumque cano Trojæ, qui primus ab oris,
nine or ten will be found to be English words; and with a very little trouble a “nonsense verse” might be formed in English, whose sounds should be identical with those of the Latin line.
Nor is dactylic metre so rare in English verse as to make its use a novelty. Rhoderich Dhu's boat song is an example of this metre.
Hail to the chief who in triumph advances!
Honored and blessed be the evergreen pine!
Long may the tree in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line! &c.
The first and third of these lines are even parts of regular hexameters. They are, in the language of Latin prosody, dactylic tetrameters a posteriore, being the last four feet of a hexameter; like the following lines from Horace.
Ibimus, O socii comitesque.
Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis.
Let us now look at the manner in which the attempt to introduce this metre has been made. Sydney, one of the first who wrote in this metre, followed an entirely erroneous system. He attempted to ingraft, not only the metre but also the mode of constructing it. He endeavored to base his metre, not on accent but on quantity, and to govern English hexameters by the rules of Latin prosody. This was contrary to the principles of our language, and therefore impossible. No one can read, as we have marked it, the following line, one of his hexameters,
Oppressed with ruinous conceits by the help of an outcry,
Lines like this, though correct enough hexameters in Latin, are poor prose in English. Add to this the forced style in which his hexameters were written, and there is no difficulty in seeing that they could not be popular.
It is interesting to observe, however, that those of his lines, in which there is no violation of English pronunciation, are more melodious than most of those which have been written upon the other and the true system; a fact to which we shall have occasion to refer. Thus, in the following, if the words “rivers” and “greyhound” be accented on the last syllable of each, and the word “solemnize” on its penult, the passage, if not very poetical, will be found at least quite melodious.
First shall fertile grounds not yield increase of a good seed;
First the rivers shall cease to repay their floods to the ocean;
First may a trusty greyhound transform himself to a tiger;
First shall virtue be vice and beauty be counted a blemish;
Ere that I leave with song of praise her praise to solemnize.
Southey, in his Vision of Judgment, adopted different and more correct principles of versification. Disregarding entirely the rules of Latin prosody, he formed his verse according to accent; following in this the ordinary rules of English verse. He varied from the Latin hexameter in often, and perhaps generally, using a trochee in the place of the spondee. This however is not as great a variation as it might at first seem. When we mark the feet of Latin hexameters, as it has been shown that we do, by accent, spondees sound very much like trochees. For in our reading the spondee is made to consist of two syllables, the first accented and the second unaccented; and this forms a trochee. Thus the line,
Humano capiti cervicem pietor equinam,
sounds nearly, if not quite, as it would were the first and fourth feet trochees.
Southey also made some changes in the structure of the verse, which were of questionable propriety. Feeling probably the restriction of this metre upon his rapid pen, and fearing, as he says, lest the metre should “appear forced and exotic,” he took the license “of using any foot of two or three syllables at the beginning of a line.” Thus the following lines are, we suppose, to be read as we have marked them.
Upon all seas and shores, wheresoever her rights were offended—
And my feet, methought, sunk and I fell precipitate. Starting—
In this license Southey broke in upon the harmony and distinctive character of the verse; which demands, in Latin, a long, in English, an accented syllable for its first. To commence the verse with one or more short syllables, is to obliterate almost entirely the distinction between dactylic and anapæstic measure, and certainly to diminish the melody of the hexameter.
The verse of Evangeline is based on accent. Longfellow has however rejected this license of Southey, and has confined his lines to the model of the ancient metre. He has therefore been more successful in forming a melodious measure than most of the poets who have before him used this metre. No one can fail to perceive the beauty and melody of the following extract; and even the English reader will have no difficulty in marking the feet:
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey.
It reminds us of what may have been its model, the well known,
Hos ego versiculos feci; tulit alter honores.
Sie vos non vobis, &c.
The lines are as smooth as Coleridge's couplet, describing and exemplifying the hexameter.
Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.
Indeed, with a single exception, we have never seen any English hexameters as melodious as most of the lines in Evangeline. It shows an evident improvement upon the metre of the translation from the Swedish, which we referred to above.
Although it is accent and not quantity which must make the feet of an English hexameter, still quantity, as governed by the rules of Latin prosody, is not wholly to be disregarded. In any metre, two lines may be equally correct, and yet one may be more melodious than the other; and especially is this true in the metre which we are considering. Where, as in anapæstic and dactylic metres, two unaccented syllables come together, it is important to the melody, as a general rule, that the unaccented syllables should also be short; otherwise the movement of the verse is heavy. By the well known rules of Latin prosody, a vowel followed immediately by two consonants (except a mute and a liquid) is long. The same thing must be true in English. Our ears indeed are generally not keen enough, or perhaps are too much accustomed to such instances, to perceive this lengthening of the vowel, or, as we should probably say, of the syllable. So long as the syllable is unaccented we do not observe whether it is long or short. Still a little attention will show us that such a lengthening of the syllable does somewhat impede the flow of the verse; and this is more perceptible, when, as is not uncommon, three consonants come together. This can be better shown by an example. The line given by Coleridge as an instance of a perfect hexameter, may be called perfect both by the Latin and the English rules.
God came down with a shout; our Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
For in the fourth foot, though the, i, in “with,” is followed by two consonants, yet but one, th, would be sounded ordinarily in our reading. It is this observance of the Latin rules which makes the hexameters, which we quoted from Sydney, so melodious. Similar instances we may find in Evangeline; for example,
She was a woman now with the heart and hopes of a woman—
Drawn by the gentle bond of a common country together—
As when after a storm a gust of wind through the tree tops.
But such lines as these are, and perhaps from the nature of the language must be comparatively rare. Nearly approaching to these, however, are lines like the following, from Evangeline,
Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow;
or as it might be written,
Lucky was he who found that stone i' the nest o' the swallow;
Thus we have in Milton,
and rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
In examining this point, it should be observed, that we are to look not at the consonants which are written, but at those which are pronounced. Thus we may call the following line perfect, even according to the strictest rules:
Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome.
For the participial termination, ng, is a simple sound; and where a consonant is doubled, we ordinarily pronounce but one and the letter, w, though ranked sometimes as a consonant, is little more than a vowel, in its effect on the melody.
We would not venture to say, that our poets should always be restricted to these rules, in the hexameter; yet there seems to be a need of paying some regard to them, especially in the attempt to adopt a novel metre. At least, if they are not to regard the lengthening of vowels, by position (to use the technical term), they should, we think, avoid the use, in an unaccented line, of a syllable which is plainly long to every ear. Thus, in the line,
Still stands the forest primeval, but under the shade of its branches,
the word, “stands,” is a long syllable, and being in an unaccented part of the line breaks the flow of the verse. So too the last line of the poem before us is open to this same objection. It is this,
Speaks and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
The second foot in this line is very harsh and hence the line is heavy. It does not linger on the ear like the melodious close of Paradise Lost,
They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.
Instances like these are not uncommon in the poem; but it is ungracious work to look for defects, and we therefore only quote a line or two, for the purpose of illustrating our meaning.
There is another fault in some of the lines of Evangeline, which is of the same kind with this. There are many monosyllables in our language which may be used either as accented or as unaccented words. The effect which they have in the verse depends upon the words which are near them. If they are immediately followed by an accented syllable, they are unaccented, and vice versâ. Thus in the following line the first “and” is accented, and the second unaccented:
And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and children.
It is necessary that a word so unimportant as a conjunction, if it is to stand at the beginning of a line and therefore be accented, should be followed by a syllable having no stress of the voice. But this rule Longfellow sometimes violates. Thus it is far easier to accent the second syllable in the following line, than the first, which the metre requires:
And undisturbed by the dash of their oars and unseen were the sleepers.
In such lines as this the dactylic rhythm is not well preserved. The first syllable of the line should always be one which no reader can fail to accent. It may require some pains to accomplish this, but the gain to the melody will repay the exertion.
Such are some of the faults which seem to us to be found in the metre of Evangeline; few but too many. No dissection is a pleasant operation, and least of all that in which a cold critic is the surgeon, and the “disjecta membra poetæ” the result. We do not know how we can better reward our readers, if there are any whom we have not wearied out, than by concluding with an extract of a translation into English hexameters of Hector's interview with Andromache; an extract in which that metre is used with admirable success, and whose melody will recommend it even to the English reader.
“Then for another, perchance, thou'lt handle the shuttle in Argos,
Slavelike, or water bear from Messeïs, or else Hypereä,
Sorely against thy will, for force will weigh heavily on thee.
Some one, perchance, will say, while he looks at thee bitterly weeping,
‘Lo this is Hector's wife, who once was first in the battle
'Mong the Dardanian host, when they fought for the safety of Ilion.'
So will the stranger say; and thine will be bitterer anguish,
Widowed of husband so brave, who might have kept off the enslaver.
Oh! may the earth o'erspread first cover me deep in her bosom,
Ere I can hear thy wail, when they drag thee from Troy as a captive.”
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