Longfellow

1. You can find anything on line, even Longfellow's poems
2. You, my reader, do not have to read the poem, but you knew that
3. You don't have to read this post, either, and you knew that
4. When I was in England with my sister Janeen--tour bus, I don't recommend it--we came to the birthplace of William Wordsworth. Some in the tour group--yes, they were American--believed we were visiting Longfellow's birthplace, kept calling him Wordsworth Longfellow. What do you think of that?
5. There's a story behind my posting the poem
6. Here it is

I've been puttering about the house this morning, repeating in my head what I remember of this poem.

When I was very young, maybe eight or nine, my mother handed me her book of Longfellow poems and pointed to the Psalm of Life. "Memorize that," she said. Truthfully, I can't remember why or what she said exactly, but that is the poem she challenged me to memorize.

Something sticks in my head about me saying something sort of deep and heavy (theologically or philosophically; deep and heavy for a child), so she handed me the poem.

It may be she just wanted to keep me busy for a while.

Of course, I memorized it.

I remember reciting it at school in front of the class. I may have thought it was great poetry then. Now I don't (but just you try to write one like it, adhering to the meter and the rhyme scheme, I hear a small voice saying). The ideas? Well, set to rhyming poetry they seem a bit trite. But it's a psalm, expressing his sentiments. Perhaps not yours.

Frankly, I find them sound enough.


Psalm of Life
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 are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

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

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 sand 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.