In the long, sleepless watches of the night, The Cross of Snow
By Henry Wasdsworth Longfellow
July 10, 1879
A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died, and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
[Longfellow's wife, Frances Appleton, died in their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1861. She was curling her childrens' hair and her dress caught on fire. Longfellow tried to put out the fire but she died of burns. This poem was found, dated July 10, 1879, among the poet's papers and published by his brother in 1886. The Longfellow home (headquarters of Washington during the siege of Boston) is owned by the American people and open to visitors.]