Longfellow is one of the few poets that put together novel type works. He created some of the best poetry ever written. Longfellow's narrative poems, such as Evangeline, The song of Hiawatha, and The Courtship of Miles Standish, gave a romanticized view of America's early history and democratic ideals.
Evangeline is one of the best long poems ever written by any author. It's popularity at through all class distinctions. It was read and loved and pondered over in humble cottages (Wagonknecht P.85). Evangeline was the first long poem in America literature to live beyond its own time, and it would be impossible to exaggerate its vogue, either at home or abroad (Wagonknecht P.85).
The historical basis of the story was supplied in 1755 by the expulsion of the French settlers from the vicinity of the boy of Minas in Acadie as an incident of the conflict between France and England for possession of the North American continent (Wagonknecht P.86).
In the poem Evangeline they are unable to find Gabriel. Evangelines party arrives at a village and finds Gabriel's father Basil, who tells Evangeline that Gabriel had left only the day before with a party going to the Ozark Mountains to trade for moles with the Spaniards. The priest assures her, however, that the party will return to the mission in autumn when the hunting season is over. Evangeline decides to accept the priest's advice to await her lover at the mission. But the autumn comes and passes, with no Gabriel, so she again resumes her pursuit (Williams P.153 &154).
Gabriel Lajeunesse, in his passiuity and elusiveness, is unconsciously fleeing from Evangeline rather than seeking her out. Certainly he is no dominating and aggressive Odysseus, anymore than Evangeline is a merely stead fast and long-waiting Penelope; and the poem, in itself and in the popular imagination, is hers, not Gabriels (Arvin P.