The spruce ‘forest primeval’ and the Ghosts of Christmas present

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was at his desk in Cambridge, far from his native Portland in January 1847 as he prepared to write “Evangeline,” the story-poem about the exile of the Acadians from Nova Scotia. Yet as the winter descends here on Spruce Point, it is easy to see our own spruces on the edge of the Atlantic in the lines, “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock… Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean speaks…Read more