A Psalm of Life
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 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 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.
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
The story behind the psalm.........
copied from "Light from Many Lamps"
edited by Lillian Eichler Watson
It was early morning. The bright sun streamed through the windows
The young man's wife had died three years ago,
He was a poet too, this young professor;
But this could not go on, he told himself!
Suddenly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was writing
Longfellow called his poem "A Psalm of Life."
But later he allowed it to be published . . .and it went
A whole generation of school children grew up under the
The call to courage and action of a man emerging from a great
of the Craigie house in Cambridge where George
Washington had once
had his headquarters, and where a young Harvard professor
now lived. He lived, in fact, in the very room that Washington
had occupied. And as he stood gazing out of the window at the
sloping lawn and the elms, he wondered if Washington might not have
stood here once feeling perhaps as he did--
unutterably lonely and dejected.
but he longed for her still. Time had not softened
his grief nor eased the torment of his memories.
He turned restlessly from the window
and wondered how to spend the time before breakfast.
but he had no heart for poetry these days.
He had no heart for anything, it seemed.
Life had become an empty dream.
He was letting the days slip by, nursing his despondency.
Life was not an empty dream!
He must be up and doing.
Let the dead past bury its dead. . . .
in a surge of inspiration, the lines coming almost
too quickly for his racing pen.
He put it aside at first, unwilling to show it to anyone;
for as he later explained, "it was a voice from my inmost heart,
at a time when I was rallying from depression."
straight to the hearts of millions of people.
No poem ever written became so well known so fast. It was
taught in schools, recited on the stage, discussed from
pulpit and lecture platform. It crossed the ocean, and spread
like wildfire through England. It was translated into French,
German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch,
Swedish, Danish--even Sanskrit! In China it was printed on a fan
and became immensely popular.
influence of Longfellow's "Psalm." Many prominent men later
acknowledged that influence with gratitude. Henry Ford,
for example, memorized it as a lad, and in later years often
said that the sixth and ninth stanzas came back to him all his life,
inspiring him to effort and achievement. Firestone also freely
acknowledged his indebtedness to the poem,
as did many other famous men.
Edward Bok made a special visit to Longfellow
to tell him how much the last four lines meant to him.
Even Gandhi, on the other side of the world, quoted a
favorite line from it just a few days before his death
("....things are not what they seem").
sorrow, "A Psalm of Life" is one of the best-loved and most
widely read poems in the world. Its lines are full of faith
and hope, its message clear and unmistakable. Its appeal is as
vital and timely now as it ever was; in a recent poll to
determine the nation's favorite poem, it easily won first place.
For over a hundred years "A Psalm of Life"
has helped the
weary, unhappy, and discouraged
to be
"up and doing, with a heart for any fate."
No poem more richly deserves its place among the
inspirational classics of mankind.