Down North and Up Along 
We know what is to come, yet the poet's 
magic chains us to the joyful present. We 
think only of Evangeline and Gabriel, — she 
filled with deep and holy joy at the approach- 
ing perfection of her womanhood, and he filled 
with love and ambition for her. We know 
their hopes will never be realised, yet we re- 
joice as they do, as though we were, like them, 
oblivious of the future. 
While we are still lying on our hillside, a 
change comes over the face of Grand Pre. It 
is the fall of the year, and the deep peace of the 
happy valley is broken by the noise of drums 
and the wailing of women and children. 
Evangeline's father, Basil the blacksmith, 
Gabriel, and all the men of the village are 
imprisoned in the chapel, where they had been 
summoned to hear the will of their masters ; 
and the fiat has gone forth that the French 
Acadians shall be driven away as exiles, their 
homes and their property confiscated to the 
English Crown. 
There is something so cruelly inhuman in 
this decree and in the scenes that follow, as 
the poet has portrayed them, that we forget the 
facts of history and are carried away by the 
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