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Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,

Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.

Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard,

In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;

Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,

Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,

Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,

Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,

Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!

Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches

Dwells another race, with other customs and language.

Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic

Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile

Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom;

In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy;

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,

And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story,

While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

- from Longfellow's Evangeline

My grandparents used to take Tommy and me to St. Martinville, Louisiana every summer. We would stand beneath the great oak tree, the Spanish moss dripping down around our heads, and my grandmother would tell us the story of Evangeline. The beautiful Cajun maiden expelled from her home in Acadia by the British, shipped like chattel to the far-away swamps of Louisiana, who waited, waited, waited for her beloved underneath the very same oak tree shading us from the heat. As a child Longfellow's epic poem and the accompanying history lessons filled me with terror.