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Day one
A trip on a river barge. You both take passage on a large flat barge that is less than a meter above the water. The river Mississippi is muddy, silent, and very strong. About two kilometers across, entire trees can be seen floating down it.
“I know a poem.” Eva says. “It’s about love lost and the bayou.”
“It was the month of may.
Far down the Beautiful River.
Past
the Ohio shore and past the mouth of Wabash,
into
the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi,
Floated in cumbrous boat,
that was rowed by Acadian boatmen.
With
them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felecian.
The Boatmen swerved from
their course;
and
entering the Bayou Plaquemine,
Soon
were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters,
Which,
like a network of steel, extended in every direction.
Over
their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs and the Cypress
Met in dusky arch, and
trailing mosses in mid-air
Waved
like banners than hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals.
Deathlike the silence
seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons.
Dreamlike
and indistinct, and strange were all things around them;
they emerged from the
shades; and before them
Lay
in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya.
Water
lilies in myriads rocked on the light undulations
Made
by the passing oars, and resplendent in beauty, the lotus
Lifted her golden crown
above the head of the boatmen.”
“Evageline
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” She smiles sadly.
[hearing the reading of this poem is worth five experience.
If you wish you may make a 4D vs. IQ to try and memorize the
poem. If successful you get an additional ten experience]