The Cross of Snow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
During a sleepless night, the speaker sees a dead woman's face on the wall of the room where she died. A cross of snow on a mountain in the distant West becomes an image of the grief the speaker has carried unchanged for eighteen years.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Elegy, Lyric Poetry · 169 words
First lines
In the long, sleepless watches of the night, / 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.
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen rhymed lines turn from a woman's remembered death to a mountain's cross of snow and the speaker's enduring grief.
- Elegy — The speaker mourns a woman who died eighteen years earlier and remembers her blessed life.
- Lyric Poetry — A first-person speaker expresses private sorrow during a sleepless night through the comparison with an unchanging cross of snow.
Tags
grief · remembrance · bereavement · sleeplessness · sonnet
What this Textopian page supports
The Cross of Snow is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Elegy, Lyric Poetry
- Length: 169 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for The Cross of Snow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph