The ending of a word within the foot, cuts the measure, and the one chief cutting (caesura) has a cæsural pause (). The general formula for the classical hexameter is then

Imitations of this metre have not been lacking in any modern literature. The most famous of German hexameters is Goethe's lovely idyll of Hermann und Dorothea, keginning:

Hab' ich den Markt and die Straszen doch nie so einsam gesehen! Ist doch die Stadt wie gekehrt! wie ausgestorben! nicht funfzig Däucht mir, bleiben zurück von allen unsern Bewohnern.

In English, Coleridge, Southey, Clough, Kingsley, to mention only writers of this century, were all writers of hexameters. A few lines from two of these are not out of place as comparisons with Longfellow's manner.

There is a stream (I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist
Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books),
Springing far off from a loch unexplored in the folds of great
mountains,

Falling two miles through rowan and stunted alder, enveloped,
Then for four more in a forest of pine, where broad and ample
Spreads, to convey it, the glen with heathery slopes on both sides;
Broad and fair the stream, with occasional falls and narrows;
But, where the glen of its course approaches the vale of the river,
Met and blocked by a huge interposing mass of granite,
Scarce by a channel deep-cut, raging up, and raging onward,
Forces its flood through a passage so narrow a lady would step it.
-Clough, The Bothie (Hut) of Tober-na-Vuolich, 1848.
Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward,
Dwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired Æthiop people,
Skilful with needle and loom, and the arts of the dyer and carver.
-Kingsley, Andromeda.

It is not hard to see that the effect of the English hexameter is decidedly different from the effect of the classical hexameter. English words are never perfect spondees, and even fairly perfect spondees are rare. Metre in English is primarily a relation of accented and unaccented

syllables, and accent need not imply a long syllable. Hence in any lengthy work English hexameters are but a translated classical hexameter-a substitution of accented syllables for long syllables, of English iambic ('x) for spondee.*

In seeking a metre for a poem on the expulsion of the Acadians, Longfellow naturally took as a model the metre of that idyll which depicts the sufferings of the Lutherans expelled from Salzburg,-Hermann und Dorothea. It is no slight testimony to his metrical genus that he has used the hexameter with such delicate modulations, such sweetness and variety of rhythm, such harmony of theme and expression that one may say that, by a poem as widely read as any of this age, he has enriched English poetry with a new instrument of expression.

Translations. No better proof of the charm of Evangeline could be given than the numerous translations that have been made. Germany has at least six versions, Sweden three, France three, Italy two, Portugal two, in addition to versions in Danish, Spanish, and Polish. In LeMay's translation we have a national interest. From it and from a German version I draw these few lines.

Salut, vieille forêt! Noyés dans la pénombre

Et drapés fièrement dans leur feuillage sombre,

Tes sapins résineux et tes cèdres altiers

Qui se bercent au vent sur le bord des sentiers,

Jetant à chaque brise, une plainte sauvage,

Ressemblent aux chanteurs qu'entendait un autre âge,
Aux Druides anciens dont la lugubre voix

S'élevait prophétique au fond d'immenses bois !

Et l'océan plaintif vers ses rives brumeuses

*Of the genuine ancient, or pure dactylic hexameter verse, the English language is altogether incapable; not only because no language whose poetry is founded on elocutional principles can, without most gross solecism, exactly imitate the rhythm of a language whose poetry is founded on the rules and practice of music, but there are not a sufficient number of pure dactyles and pure spondees in the English language to make the imitation possible for any length of time.Blackie, Hora Hellenica, p. 233. See also Arnold, On Translating Homer, and Spedding, Reviews and Discussions.

S'avance en agitant ses vagues écumeuses,

Et de profond soupirs s'élevèrent de ses flots

Pour répondre, O forêt, à tes tristes sanglots.

-L. Pamphile Le May, Évangeline, 2me ed., Québec, 1870.

Dies ist des Urwaldes Pracht! Die wispernden Tannen und Fich-
ten,

Moosigen Bartes, im Kleid, das grün, and verschwommen in
Zwielicht,

Stehen Druiden gleich sie, mit düster prophetischen Stimmen
Stehen wie Harfner sie grau, mit Bärten über die Brust hin.
Laut aus dem Abgrunde rauschet die wilde See in der Nähe
Und im Echo verhallet des Waldes Jammer und Klage.

-Evangeline, übersetzt von Karl Knortz, Leipzig, 1872.

Already the

Page 71. 1. 1.-This is the forest primeval. words have come to have the suggestiveness of the opening phrase of the Iliad or the Æneid (Holmes).

1. 2-garments green. The absence of rime throws the poet upon subtler devices of musical undertone. These fall, it will be noticed, into three chief classes, instances of which constantly recur, giving rise to the characteristic style of the poem. They are:-first, Alliteration, the riming of initial sounds, as here; second, Repetition of words and phrases, often in the form of anaphoras, as in ll. 3, 4; 7,9; 16, 17, etc.; and third, Refrain, or the recurrence, time and again, of particular modes of thought or strains of melody. This last lyrical characteristic constitutes one of the greatest charms of the poem.

1. 3.—Druids. Priests of the Celtic peoples of Gaul and Britain. Cf. Evang., 1. 890. "The Druids-for that is the name they give their magicians-hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it....It is very probable that the priests may have received their name from the Greek name for that tree [drus, oak]. The mistletoe, however, is rarely found upon the robur [oak]; and when found is gathered with rites replete with religious awe....On the fifth day of the moon....clad in a white robe, the priest ascends the tree, and cuts the mistletoe

with a golden sicle, which is received by others in a white cloak."-Pliny, xvi. (Bohn).

eld. Here, olden times, antiquity (AS. œldu, age). An archaic word favoured by Spenser and Thomson, in the sense however of old age.

O cursed Eld: The cankerworm of writs.

-Spenser, F. Q. iv. ii. xxxiii. The whitening snows

Of venerable eld.

-Thomson, Castle of Indolence, ii. xxxi.

1. 5.-its rocky caverns. An imaginative touch. Haliburton says of the coast of Nova Scotia: "The appearance of the sea coast is generally inhospitable, presenting a bold rocky shore... The southern margin is rugged and broken, with very prominent features, deep indents and craggy islands, and ledges inserted into the sea....The features of the northern coast are soft and free from rocks" (ii. 3).

1. 6. answers the wail. Inversions for emphasis and metre are so frequent in Evangeline as to form a marked characteristic of the poem.

1. 8.-Leaped like the roe. A biblical comparison. "Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains....My beloved is like a roe," Song of Solomon ii. 8f. This simile is thought to anticipate the tragedy of the story. Page 72. 1. 15.-nought but tradition remains.... Grand-Pré. Pronounce gron(g)' prā'. The village was situated on the Minas Basin, near the east bank of the estuary of the Gaspereau. "No traces of it are now to be seen, except the cellars of the houses, a few aged orchards, and willows. Haliburton, ii. 115. These still mark the ancient site, near the present village of Grand Pré. In the outskirts at the cross-roads the credulous stranger is now shown the site of Basil's forge. The men of the village were only nine in number in Winslow's list (N.S. Hist. Coll., iii. 122). 1. 18.-sung by the pines. The first touch of refrain; cf. 1. 1 and 1. 2, n.

1. 19.—Acadie (ah ca dē'). See Historical Note.

PART THE FIRST.

1. 20.-the Acadian land. The halo which surrounds the memory of the Acadians, who represent, as it were, a return of the golden age, is entirely due to the Abbé Guillaume Raynal (1713–1796). An ardent supporter of the people in the times preceding the French Revolution, Raynal deepened the impression of the miserable condition of the French peasantry under Louis XVI. by his picture of Arcadian happiness of the French colonists in the New World. His work, Histoire philosophique....des Européens dans les deux Indes, was published in 1770. His description of Acadia is transferred bodily into Haliburton's history, and is used as poetic material by Longfellow.

History has shown the Acadians to have been superstitious, quarrelsome, litigious,-by no means the qualities attributed to them by the Abbé and the poet.

Basin of Minas. Pronounce me'nas. The eastern arm of the Bay of Fundy. The tides rise with tremendous current at the entrance (see 1. 29, n.), where the dangerous tidal wave is called the bore.

1. 22f.-Vast meadows, etc. "The settlement of the Acadians extended from the mouth of the Gaspereau river to within two miles of Kentville. Satisfied with the abundant crops which were gathered from their diked fields, they gave themselves but little trouble in the cultivation of the upland, and seldom extended their clearings beyond the view of the meadows. They had enclosed and cultivated all the Great Prairie [i.e. Grand Pré], which then contained 2,100 acres, besides smaller marshes in the Gaspereau, and the Horton river."-Haliburton, ii. 116.

Page 73. 1. 23.—Giving the village its name, and pasture. Notice the construction with two senses of "L give "

(zeugma). Other instances (l. 173, 408, etc.) show this to be a stylistic peculiarity of the poem.