<meta>

<name>Henry Wadsworth <index>Longfellow</index></name>

</author>

<title>The Cross of Snow</title>

<source>Scraped from the University of Toronto's <worktitle>Representative Poetry Online</worktitle> (see <uri>http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo</uri>) and marked up by the Sonneteer.</source>

<remark>Called by Prof Mark Richardson <quote>the most perfectly realized Italian sonnet ever done by an American</quote>, which it indeed may be.</remark>

</meta>

<line>In the long, sleepless watches of the <rhyme on="a">night</rhyme>,</line>

<line>A gentle face — the face of one long <rhyme on="b">dead</rhyme> —</line>

<line>Looks at me from the wall, where round its <rhyme on="b">head</rhyme></line>

<line>The night-lamp casts a halo of pale <rhyme on="a">light</rhyme>.</line>

</quatrain>

<line>Here in this room she died; and soul more <rhyme on="a">white</rhyme></line>

<line>Never through martyrdom of fire was <rhyme on="b">led</rhyme></line>

<line>To its repose; nor can in books be <rhyme on="b">read</rhyme></line>

<line>The legend of a life more <rhyme on="a">benedight</rhyme>.</line>

</quatrain>

</octave>

<line>There is a mountain in the distant <rhyme on="c">West</rhyme></line>

<line>That, sun-defying, in its deep <rhyme on="d">ravines</rhyme></line>

<line>Displays a cross of snow upon its <rhyme on="e">side</rhyme>.</line>

<line>Such is the cross I wear upon my <rhyme on="c">breast</rhyme></line>

</quatrain>

<line>These eighteen years, through all the changing <rhyme on="d">scenes</rhyme></line>

<line>And seasons, changeless since the day she <rhyme on="e">died</rhyme>.</line>

</couplet>

</sestet>

</sonnet>

</sonneteer>