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's wife burned to death in a domestic accident. He remembers her in this poem (and many other poems he wrote). After Frances' death Longfellow found it difficult to write poetry for many years, when he began again many of his poems deal with his personal tragedy.

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.

(Longfellow sleeps in a room with Frances' picture on the wall. He imagines the shine of the nightlight onto it is like the halo that saints or angels have in religious paintings).

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.

(He is writing in the room where Frances died. He compares her death to the death of Christian martyrs who were burned at the stake. (Longfellow seems to have forgotten that it was mainly heretics and witches who were burned at the stake: but a lot of the art of this poem is hearing only what you want to hear). Using the rare word benedight [blessed] reminds us that we are talking about legends in old books here: Longfellow doesn't want to directly confront the reality of Frances burning to death, nor does he want us to think of so gruesome an image too clearly)

There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

(Longfellow has seen a photograph of a mountain with a cross formation in its ravines. This is quite common - see the link)


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 says that his heart is like a mountain with a frozen cross on it. He sees the seasons change outside, but for him nothing changes: the only reality in his world is dead Frances).

The poem is a conventional Italian sonnet with a strong volta between lines 8 and 9.

In its context choosing to write an Italian sonnet would have seemed very old-fashioned (the sonnets of the Romantics had been far more experimental than this).

Longfellow is choosing a deliberately soothing topic (the death of a loved one) and presenting it in a familiar and old-fashioned form (Italian sonnet). He is delivering something that his audience will find it easy to identify as 'poesy' and that won't make them think too much.