American romantic writers such as Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow valued imagination, nature, and individual feelings over logic and reason. In the following poems, Dickinson and Longfellow explore the longings of the heart.
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Heart! We will forget him!
by Emily Dickinson
Heart! We will forget him!
You and I— tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave—
I will forget the light!
When you have done, pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest* while you’re lagging
I remember him!
*lest: for fear that
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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 that I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all my changing scenes