What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
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| H. W. Longfellow (1807-1882) |
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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” (1838).
The Complete Poetical Works of Henry W. Longfellow, Cambridge
Edition, edited by Horace E. Scudder (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1893);
republished as The Poetical Works of Longfellow, introduction by George
Monteiro (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975).
