Down North and Up Along 
silver river more plainly than the imagined 
ships, and crowded on their insufficient decks 
are the once happy Acadians. 
Evangeline is there, alone in the world. 
Her father lies by the sea, her lover is on 
another ship, for in the confusion of embark- 
ing, the cruel haste and the urging, they were 
separated. 
We watch the ships sail down Minas Basin 
toward Blomidon. We watch them disappear 
around the bold front of the rocky bluff; and 
we know that Evangeline's and Gabriel's ships 
took different courses, and that these two wan- 
dered over the earth the rest of their lives 
in search of each other, not despairing and not 
staying the hand because the heart ached. 
They laboured for others while struggling ever 
onward toward the goal they both sought. 
We put down the oft-read poem with dim 
eyes. Our hearts go out, not to Evangeline, 
but to the whole world of suffering humanity, 
whose representative she is. Longfellow seized 
upon an event in history but to give living 
form to a universal truth. 
We know the Grand Pre before us is not 
the imagined scene of his beautiful poem, yet 
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