The Book of the Epic Part 42

Slowly, bare-headed, through the surf we bore The sacred cross, and, kneeling, kissed the sh.o.r.e.

'But what a scene was there? Nymphs of romance, Youths graceful as the Fawn, with eager glance, Spring from the glades, and down the alleys peep, Then headlong rush, bounding from steep to steep, And clap their hands, exclaiming as they run, "Come and behold the Children of the Sun!"

Not content with an epic apiece, Barlow and Trumbull, with several other "Hartford wits," joined forces in composing the Anarchiad, which exercised considerable influence on the politics of its time.

In 1819 appeared Washington Irving's Sketch-Book, which contains the two cla.s.sics, Legend of the Sleepy Hollow, and Rip Van Winkle, which are sometimes quoted as inimitable samples of local epics in prose.

Cooper's Leather-stocking series of novels, including the Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie, are also often designated as "prose epics of the Indian as he was in Cooper's imagination," while some of his sea-stories, such as The Pirate, have been dubbed "epics of the sea." Bryant, first-born of our famous group of nineteenth-century American poets, made use of many of the Indian myths and legends in his verse. But he rendered his greatest service to epic poetry by his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, accomplished when already eighty years of age.

There are sundry famous American heroic odes or poems which contain epic lines, such as Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Dana's Buccaneers, Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, and Biglow Papers, Whittier's Mogg Megone, Holmes's Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle, Taylor's Amram's Wooing, Emerson's Concord Hymn, etc., etc. Then, too, some critics rank as prose epics Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, Hale's Man Without a Country, Bret Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp, Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, etc., etc.

It is, however, Longfellow, America's most popular poet, who has written the nearest approach to a real epic, and the poems most likely to live, in his Wreck of the Hesperus, Skeleton in Armor, Golden Legend, Hiawatha, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Courtship of Miles Standish, and Evangeline, besides translating Dante's grand epic The Divine Comedy.

In Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus we have a miniature nautical epic, in the Skeleton in Armor our only epic relating to the Norse discovery, in the Golden Legend, and in many of the Tales of a Wayside Inn, happy adaptations of mediaeval epics or romances.

Hiawatha, often termed "the Indian Edda," is written in the metre of the old Finnish Kalevala, and contains the essence of many Indian legends, together with charming descriptions of the woods, the waters, and their furry, feathered, and finny denizens. Every one has followed entranced the career of Hiawatha, from birth to childhood and boyhood, watched with awe his painful initiation to manhood and with tender sympathy his idyllic wooing of Minnehaha and their characteristic wedding festivities. Innumerable youthful hearts have swelled at his anguish during the Famine, and countless tears have silently dropped at the death of the sweet little Indian squaw. After connecting this Indian legend with the coming of the White Man from the East, the poet, knowing the Red man had to withdraw before the new-comer skilfully made use of a sun-myth, and allowed us to witness Hiawatha's departure, full of allegorical significance:

Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-wind Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the Hereafter!

The Courtship of Miles Standish brings us to the time of the Pilgrim's settlement in the New World and has inspired many painters.

The next poem, which some authorities consider Longfellow's masterpiece, is connected with another historical event, of a later date, the conquest of Acadia by the English. It is a matter of history that in 1755 the peaceful French farmers of Acadia, without adequate notice or proper regard for family ties, were hurried aboard waiting British vessels and arbitrarily deported to various ports, where they were turned adrift to join the scattered members of their families and earn their living as best they could. The outline of the story of Evangeline, and of her long, faithful search for her lover Gabriel, is too well known to need mention. There are besides few who cannot vividly recall the reunion of the long-parted lovers just as Gabriel's life is about to end. All through this hopeless search we are vouchsafed enchanting descriptions of places and people, and fascinating glimpses of scenery in various sections of our country, visiting in imagination the bayous of the South and the primeval forests, drifting along the great rivers, and revelling in the beauties of nature so exquisitely delineated for our pleasure. But, as is fitting in regard to the theme, an atmosphere of gentle melancholy hovers over the whole poem and holds the listener in thrall long as its musical verses fall upon the ear.

Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches Dwells another race, with other customs and language.

Only along the sh.o.r.e 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.