Home Articles Facts Games Poems & Quotes
A Psalm of Life - What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist


By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.


 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was born in Portland, Maine. His father was a lawyer and congressman, and was keen that his son should follow in his footsteps. However, it was academia that embraced Longfellow for his career choice. After college he spent three years in Europe preparing for a professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin college, where he taught from 1829 to 1835. And later went on to teach at Harvard. Eventually quitting in 1854 to write full time. Longfellow's later poetry reflected his interest in establishing an American mythology; and even during his own lifetime was celebrated as a pioneering American poet.



Want to comment on this poem? Send us an e-mail and we'll publish your most interesting views on our comments page.

Click Here for the complete poems of Longfellow online.

Home   l  Biology   l  Physics   l  Planetary Science   l  Technology   l  Space

First Science 2014