--No other American poet has equaled Longfellow's longer
narrative poems. Bryant and Poe would not attempt long poems. The flights
of Whittier and Emerson were comparatively short. It is unusually difficult
to write long poems that will be read. In the case of _Evangeline_ (1847),
_Hiawatha_ (1855), and _The Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858), Longfellow
proved an exception to the rule.
_Evangeline_ is based upon an incident that occurred during the French and
Indian War. In 1755 a force of British and colonial troops sailed from
Boston to Acadia (Nova Scotia) and deported the French inhabitants.
Hawthorne heard the story, how the English put Evangeline and her lover on
different ships and how she began her long, sad search for him. When
Hawthorne and Longfellow were discussing this one day at dinner at the
Craigie House, the poet said, "If you really do not want this incident for
a tale, let me have it for a poem." Hawthorne consented to give his
classmate all poetical rights to the story.
_Evangeline_ is the tale of a love "that hopes and endures and is patient."
The metrical form, dactylic hexameter, is one that few of our poets have
successfully used, and many have thought it wholly unfitted to English
verse.
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