But the last twenty years of Mr. Longfellow's life were saddened inexpressibly by the loss of his wife, and all his later work is of a sombre hue, filled through and through, unconsciously, with his own sadness. Unconsciously we say, for he never intentionally rhymed his own sorrows. There is no personal mention of his griefs in all his later poems. The death of his wife occurred on the 9th of July in 1861, and was caused by burns received from having her clothing ignited by a match upon which she trod in their library, where she had been sealing up some packages of the children's curls, which she had just cut. Mr. Longfellow was badly burned in trying to save her, and when the funeral took place was confined to his bed. She was buried upon the anniversary of her marriage-day, and was crowned with a wreath of orange blossoms. She was long remembered in Cambridge as the most beautiful woman of her time,—beautiful not alone in body, but in spirit and life. Mr. Longfellow never recovered from the tragedy, but mourned her in silence for twenty years. Heart-breaking are the entries in the journal during all this time,—entries telling at frequent intervals of his ever increasing desolation. Little was known of all this by the world until the publication of his journal, for it was one of the peculiarities of his grief that he could speak of it to no one. Only after months had passed did he allude to it in his letters even to his brothers, and then in the briefest fashion: "And now of what we both are thinking I can write no word. God's will be done." The first entry in the journal after the break made at the time of her death is this:—
"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace!
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul!
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll."
The entries in the journal are all brief, but they are frequent and like these: "Walk before breakfast with E—— and afterward alone. The country is beautiful, but oh, how sad! How can I live any longer!" "The glimmer of golden leaves in the sunshine; the lilac hedge shot with the crimson creeper; the river writing its silver S in the meadow; everything without full of loveliness. But within me the hunger, the famine of the heart!" "Another walk under the pines, in the bright morning sunshine."
"Known and unknown; human, divine:
Sweet human hand and lip and eye;
Dear heavenly friend, who canst not die:
Mine, mine forever; ever mine."
"How inexpressibly sad are all holydays! But the dear little girls had their Christmas-tree last night, and an unseen presence blessed the scene!"
No mention of his loss was ever made in his published verse, though the whole of his poetry was much sadder after that loss; but after his own death the following poem was found in his desk, written eighteen years after his wife's death:—
"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."
It was a long time before he could work again. When he felt that he could do so, he began his translation of Dante, and frequently produced a canto in a day, finding in this absorbing occupation the first alleviation of his sorrow. In a sonnet "On Translating Dante," he said:—
"I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate."
But when his work was done he always found that his burden was still awaiting him on the outside, and he took it up and bore it as patiently as he could. But he began earnestly to long for