dual personalities

In my flyover institute of learning we sometimes offer a course on reading sonnets facilitated by a gentleman who really loves sonnets. I have never been a big fan of sonnets myself, in large part because when we studied them in the 6th grade, we had to write one. Good grief! What 12-year old is capable of writing a sonnet I ask you? John Keats maybe. Certainly not I. It prejudiced me against the form. Anyway, I was glancing through the syllabus the other day and came across this one.

The Cross of Snow
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

Longfellow wrote this sonnet about his second wife, Frances Appleton Longfellow, who died after her dress caught on fire and she was severely burned. Longfellow himself was burned when he attempted to put out the flames with a rug and his own body. His face was burned and that is why, from then on, he always wore a beard.

Longfellow photographed by Julia Cameron

Longfellow’s great fame faded after his death and he is mostly known today for having written The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. However, I doubt that school children are made to memorize portions of it now or learn about meter by reciting This is the forest primeval…from Evangeline.

More’s the pity. I like this sonnet about his wife. Could I be wrong about sonnets? Look for more sonnets in this blog as we widen our appreciation together!