The fireside poets wrote their poetry in such a way that families would gather around the fireplace and read them to each other. They were written so that they were easy to memorize and recite. The poets wrote in standard forms, regular meter and rhymed stanzas. Some of the subject matter was about daily life, mythology, and even politics in the United States. A couple of poets wrote their best poetry due to personal tragedy that they had suffered in their own personal lives. While this subject matter was daunting, it was still part of life that some people unfortunately endured as did James Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They each wrote poems that were both written due to personal tragedy that they both endured. “The …show more content…
The poems are written by Lowell and Longfellow after they both have tragically lost a loved one. The theme of these poems are grief, death, and loss. Grief is shown in “The First Snowfall” when Lowell states “Flake by flake, healing and hiding/The scar of our deep-plunged woe.” (Lowell 31-32) Lowell is dealing with the death of his daughter and is still deeply scarred by her death, as he will be forever. Longfellow is dealing with the tragic death of his wife. In “The Cross of Snow,” grief is shown when Longfellow says “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.” (Longfellow 1-5) Longfellow is kept awake with the never-ending feeling of grief and the thought of his wife’s death. He will always remember where she died, and his soul will never be at rest. Lowell and Longfellow use the nature of snow as having healing powers. At the ends of both poems the snow symbolizes eternal love. “The First Snowfall” uses the first snowfall of the season and “The Cross of Snow” uses snow that has settled deep in the ravines in the sides of a mountain. The snow forms a natural cross in the snow that can be seen from afar when the sun shines upon the mountain a certain