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.