“The Cross of Snow” (1879)

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.

In the words of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, ‘Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow’; ‘The Cross of Snow’ being an expression of the latter. Simple yet striking, straight forward and drawn from a real life of hardships and mishaps, this sonnet goes down as one of his memorable tributes to Frances Appleton, his deceased wife and the portrayal of his sadness owing to her absence. Much pivotal to the emotional aspects are ‘sleepless’, ‘halo of pale light’ and ‘gentle face’. The reason of her death referred to as ‘ martyrdom of fire’ and the comparison between the natural landscape’s cross and the cross of Christ donned by the poet himself lend a powerful emotional quotient to the poem – a characteristic of most of his serious poetry in later life. Delving further into the reference made to ‘the cross’, ‘cross’ depicts the poet’s longing, seen as a lifelong burden that he has to bear.