If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. 
Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection! 
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike. 725
Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike,
Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!”
Cheered by the good man’s words, Evangeline labored and waited. 
Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean,
But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, “Despair not!” 730
Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort,
Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. 
Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer’s footsteps;—­
Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence;
But as a traveler follows a streamlet’s course through the valley:  735
Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its water
Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only;
Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it,
Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur;
Happy, at length, if he find a spot where it reaches an outlet. 740

SECTION II.

It was the month of May.  Far down the Beautiful River,
Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash,
Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi,
Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. 
It was a band of exiles:  a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked 745
Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together,
Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune;
Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay,
Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers
On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas. 750
With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felician. 
Onward o’er sunken sands, through a wilderness sombre with forests,
Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river;
Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders. 
Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike 755
Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current,
Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars
Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin,
Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded. 
Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, 760
Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens,
Stood the houses of planters, with negro cabins and