Poe's Quarrel with Boston Writers

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Boston: William D. Ticknor & Company, 1847

In this sentimental poem, Longfellow follows the lifelong quest of Evangeline, a young woman separated from her lost love Gabriel by the Acadian Expulsion from Atlantic Canada in the 1750s. Scorning didacticism, Poe would have found the pious ending of this poem hard to take:

All was ended now, the hope, and the   fear, and the sorrow,
All the aching of heart, the restless,   unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant   anguish of patience!
And, as she pressed once more the   lifeless head to her bosom,
Meekly she bowed her own, and   murmured, "Father, I thank thee!"

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts