THE CROSS OF SNOW a sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in memory of his wife

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 book be read
The legend of a life more bedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravine
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.

14 lines of iambic pentameter (5 short/ long beats per line ), rhyme scheme, abba cddc efg efg
in a poetic formula with pent up passion for a lost beloved.

Will we some years hence need a poetic memoriam to the United States of America as we once knew and loved her?