A Psalm of Life
- Date
- 1838
- Language
- English
- Country
- Form
- Lyric poem, 9 quatrains, alternating rhyme (ABAB)
- First published
- The Knickerbocker, October 1838 (anonymous); Voices of the Night, 1839
- Themes
- resilience, action, mortality
The source
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.
Commentary
Dr. Ruxandra RouxHead of Literary Research & Development
Written on July 26, 1838 and published anonymously that October in The Knickerbocker. Longfellow called it a voice from his “inmost heart”, written while he was recovering from depression after personal loss.
So this is not a poster slogan. It is a man talking himself back into the day. Life is not an empty dream, he says. It is a battlefield, and you can leave “footprints on the sands of time” for someone lost to follow. Death is in every stanza, the grave, the funeral march, the shipwrecked brother. He just refuses to let it win the argument. The last order is “Learn to labor and to wait”: act now, and be patient about the results. In the nineteenth century it was wildly popular, reprinted and translated far beyond the United States. We are more suspicious of encouragement now. It is not obvious that we are better off.
Songs
The song made from A Psalm of Life.
