difference in the character of the language. With German hexameters the analogy is closer. On July 10, 1861, Mrs. Longfellow died the tragic death which has been so often described, from injuries received by fire the day before. Never was there a greater tragedy within a household; never one more simply and nobly borne. It was true to Lowell's temperament to write frankly his sorrow in exquisite verse; but it became Longfellow's habit, more and more, to withhold his profoundest feelings from spoken or written utterance; and it was only after his death that his portfolio, being opened, revealed this sonnet, suggested by a picture of the western mountain whose breast bears the crossed furrows. THE 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. July 10, 1879. {80 _Life_, ii. 262, 263, 265, 266, 268.} {81 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xx. 345.} {82 _Ib._ 347.} {83 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xxi. 249.} {84 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xxi. 249.} {85 _Life_, ii. 248.} CHAPTER XVIII BIRDS OF PASSAGE Longfellow had always a ready faculty for grouping his shorter poems in volumes, and had a series continuing indefinitely under the name of "Birds of Passage," which in successive "flights" were combined with longer works. The first was contained in the volume called "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858); the second in "Tales of a Wayside Inn" (1863); flight the third appeared in connection with "Aftermath" (1873); flight the fourth in "Masque of Pandora and Other Poems" (1875), and flight the fifth in "Keramos and Other Poems" (1878). These short poems stand representative of his middle life, as "Voices of the Night" and "Ballads" did for the earlier; and while the maturer works have not, as a whole, the fervor and freshness of the first, they have more average skill of execution.