From Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born in Portland, Maine, 1807. He went to Bowdoin College and became a scholar of literature and modern languages. In 1826, he traveled to Europe to study German, French, Spanish, and Italian. He got married, and in 1835 he returned to Europe to learn Scandinavian languages, but his wife came with him, and she had a miscarriage and died in the Netherlands. He fell in love again, with a young woman named Fanny Appleton, but she rejected his marriage proposal. So grieving for his first wife, despairing over Fanny's refusal, he threw himself into his work and became a popular American poet.

In 1843, Fanny agreed to marry Henry after all. They were very happy, they had six children, and Fanny helped her husband with his work. Longfellow wrote incredibly successful book-length poems, like Evangeline (1847), about separated lovers in Nova Scotia, and The Song of Hiawatha (1855), about an Ojibwe leader. Whenever he published a book of poetry, it would sell out almost immediately.

But in 1861, Fanny Longfellow was using sealing wax and her dress caught on fire. Longfellow rushed in from the next room and tried to smother the fire by throwing his arms around his wife. But Fanny died the next day, and Longfellow was heartbroken. He wrote "The Cross of Snow" in her memory.

The Cross of Snow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.