Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Cross of Snow (Repost - April 5, 2011)

Happy Easter!

In 1873, a group of explorers led by Clarence King found and photographed a legendary mountain in Colorado called the Mount of the Holy Cross. Prior to their documentation of the mountain’s actual existence, an aura of mystery and myth had surrounded it. No one was sure of its actual location, and many maps of the time placed it at least 30 miles away from its true position. But the real cause of the mythology around the mountain was the cross of snow, formed by intersecting couloirs, that remained on its ridge even after the rest of the snow on the mountain had melted.

Americans were thrilled with King’s discovery of the Holy Cross, and were dazzled by William H. Jackson’s photograph (perhaps his most famous photo of all).

William Henry Jackson: Mount of the Holy Cross (1873) . Photo courtesy of Idaho State University

They were even more impressed when, three years later, Thomas Moran’s painting, ‘The Mount of the Holy Cross,’ was awarded a medal at the Centennial Exposition (1876).

Thomas Moran, Mountain of the Holy Cross, 1875, oil on canvas. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Gene Autry. Museum of the American West, Autry National Center.

And it turns out that one day, in 1879, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was looking through an illustrated book of western scenery. There he saw the Mount of the Holy Cross, and he subsequently wrote this poem, The Cross of Snow, about the death of his wife in a fire eighteen years earlier. The poem was only published after Longfellow’s death.

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Image courtesy of Gutenberg.org

The Morning of the Morning

by Mary Crow - Poet Laureate of Colorado (1996-2010)

Why let it matter so much?: the morning’s morningness,
early dark modulating into light
and the tall thin spruces jabbing their black outlines at dawn,
light touching the slope’s outcroppings of rock and yellow grass,
as I sit curled under blankets in the world
after the world Descartes shattered,
a monstrous fracture
like the creek’s water surging through broken ice.

Arapaho National Forest, Colorado. Credit: racoles

A silent wind bounces spruce branches
in that motion that sets molecules vibrating latitude by latitude
to crack the absolute
of feeling, of knowing what I know, of knowing who I am,
while down the road the town wakes to hammer and saw—
a sound that says to some, if you don’t grow you’re dead—
and then farther down the elk and deer gather
at a farmer’s fence for his handout of hay.

Elk and the Canyon. Credit: elizabethfoote

Late January: just outside Rocky Mountain National Park:
a high branch of ponderosa offers a rosette
of needles blackgreen and splayed as in a Japanese scroll painting,
which is beautiful if I focus there and not on the sprawl I’m part of
in this rented condo where I don’t want to live since I, too, need
more rooms to haul my coffee to, more bookshelves for books
I haven’t time to read—bird chatter!—I shouldn’t make one more resolution
I can’t keep to spend more time with friends.

Ponderosa Pines Dusted with Snow. Credit: peachygreen

But it’s morning and morning’s my time of day
as spring’s my season; more light, I say.
I do regret some things I’ve done and if I could,
I’d do things differently: start sooner, say, look deeper.
One flake of snow drifts down slantwise,
a lovely interruption to my tirade—
as each aspen is to the larger groves of taller firs—
and brings me back to what’s happening here.

Copyright © Mary Crow first published in Ploughshares, Emerson College, 2001

Old Main, CU Campus. Credit: Ellyn B.

Read more of Mary Crow's poetry at MaryCrow.net.

Reg Brewer - Windmill (1925)

I stand where weathers beat my breast,

Where every wind turns round my sails,

I stand where summer sunbeams rest,

And where the winter flings his gales.

Marfa, Texas. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

High on this hill I see below

The ripening ears of golden corn,

But when the winter zephyrs blow,

I look upon this scene, forlorn.

Magdalena, New Mexico. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

My arms, they seldom rest they turn

With every tidal wave of wind,

Deep in my bosom I discern

The grain that I must slowly grind.

I work from morning till the eve,

My years of toil unending are,

But quiet winds of night will leave

Me still beneath the evening star.

Sheridan County, Kansas. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Lo, I stand out against the sky,

Where the horizoned purples leap,

And as the shades of evening die,

I slowly still my arms in sleep.

Baca County, Colorado. Courtesy of Library of Congress.