these eighteen years

Instrumentation: SSAATTBB a cappella
Purchase: Contact composer directly
Duration: 6:00
Language: English
Story:  I've always been drawn to the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  This poem is remarkably personal in his output and one of only a few times that Longfellow used the word "I" in a poem.  His wife died tragically in a fire - eighteen years after her passing, he encountered a picture of a mountain in the American west with a pattern of snow that resembled a cross and penned this poignant poem. 

Text:

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.
- Henry Wadsworth Longellow
excerpted from The Cross of Snow

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