Notes
1] "`Looking over one day,' says Mr. Longfellow's biographer, `an illustrated book of Western scenery, his attention was arrested by a picture of that mysterious mountain upon whose lonely, lofty breast the snow lies in long furrows that make a rude but wonderfully clear image of a vast cross. At night, as he looked upon the pictured countenance that hung upon his chamber wall, his thoughts framed themselves into the verses that follow. He put them away in his portfolio, where they were found after his death." (Editor, p. 220.) The Mountain of the Holy Cross, at just over 14,000 feet, belongs to the Sawatch range of the Rocky Mountains and rises about one hundred miles west of Denver and fifteen miles south of Vail, Colorado. The first photograph of it, by William Henry Jackson in 1873, can be seen now in the Smithsonian Institution. A postage stamp commemorating the state's 75th anniversary depicted the image.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Bibliographical and Critical Notes, Riverside Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890), III, 220. PS 2250 E90 Robarts Library.
Publication date note: posthumously
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/1/24*1:2007/1/8
Composition date:
10
July
1879
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbacdecde