Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Afternoon in February

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(1807-1882)

Afternoon in February

The day is ending,

The night is descending;

The marsh is frozen,

The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes

The red sun flashes

On village windows

That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;

The buried fences

Mark no longer

The road o’er the plain;

While through the meadows,

Like fearful shadows,

Slowly passes

A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,

And every feeling

Within me responds

To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,

My heart is bewailing

And tolling within

Like a funeral bell.

kempis poetry magazine

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Ton van Kempen: Winter

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(1807-1882)

The Cross of Snow

IIn 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 changingscenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died.