Scribd
Upload
1K views

The Cross of Snow Analysis

Uploaded by

api-233802895
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
1K views

The Cross of Snow Analysis

Uploaded by

api-233802895
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Paraphrase In the long, sleepless stretches of the night, A gentle face of a person who died a long time ago

looks at me from the picture on the wall, where the light from the lamp creates a halo around the dead persons head. She died in this room, and she was a good person, and no one ever suffered as she did when she died in the fire. You cannot read about a more blessed person in books. There is a mountain in the West with a cross made of snow on its side which does not melt even in the sun. I wear a cross like that around my neck and have for eighteen years, through all the changes and the passing seasons, but my cross has not changed since the day she died.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Cross of Snow" 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. Vocabulary Martyrdom: extreme suffering; torment; death of a martyr Martyr: a person who undergoes severe or constant suffering; a person who would die for a cause/religion Benedight: blessed *Participial: a verbal acting as an adjective Metaphor: cross, halo Analogy: cross of snow, his burden Imagery: ring of light, cross of snow, fiery death Diction: benedight, two uses of change as participial, choice of West (also symbol), sundefying Form: Italian sonnetturn is in line 8

Tone: Somber, maybe sad (sleepless watches of night, loved one is dead, she had a white soul, he is changeless since the day she died) Theme While the world goes through its changes, some personal burdens will always weigh as heavily upon us as they did in our first moment of the experience. How Theme is Developed In the first eight lines, unified by the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA, the speaker establishes that his love died in a fire. He emphasizes her goodness through the imagery of the ring of light on the picture, making her angelic. He goes on to call her life a legend, something larger than life, and he uses the archaic word benedight to draw further attention to her heavenliness. Then, the poem shifts to a CDECDE rhyme scheme just as it shifts to a focus on a scene in nature of a mountain with a frozen cross of snow. It is in the West, the symbol of death (the sun sets in the west), and the imagery of deep ravines and the snow that makes up the cross emphasize the coldness that the sun cant warm. Finally, the speaker creates an analogy between the frozen cross of snow and the cross he wears on his breast. The speaker emphasizes the constancy of his grief by juxtaposing the participial changing with the participial changeless. The coldness of the mountainside cross is now equated with the deep loss he feels; coldness is often associated with death. The cross becomes a metaphor for the burden of grief that the speaker always feels and believes will never fade away.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wife died tragically when an ember from the fireplace caught her dress on fire and burnt her so badly that she died a few days later. Longfellow tried to put out the fire, and it is said that his face was so badly disfigured that he grew the familiar long beard to hide the scars. Eighteen years later he was looking at a book with pictures of the far west and the mountains when he came across a picture much like the one reproduced here. The poem that resulted is "The Cross of Snow," one of his most poignant and touching poems.

From http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/longfellow.html

You might also like