A PSALM OF LIFE

                                        A PSALM OF LIFE

A PSALM OF LIFE is one of ten best poems written by American writer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).  It is sub-titled “What THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.’

Written more than 180 years ago in 1838, the poem has an immortal message for all people, especially the youth.   Didactic in tone, it is vigorously motivational.  It shows the romantic attitude of the poet towards the shortness of human life which can be used , like great men before us, to do sublime  deeds  which future  generations may like to emulate.  There is an evidently existential element in the poem. The poem wants the readers to forget the past, shun idleness, seize the current moment, act immediately and find themselves farther than ever before. He does not want them to trust the uncertain future however pleasant it may appear to be.  His clarion call is to keep on acting in the living present.  He has   also a word of rejection against the religious pessimists who preach that man is mortal; he is merely a handful of dust and ultimately returns to dust after spending a short time on this earth.   According to him, life is not a sheer dream; its soul is real and the grave is not its final goal. Here, the poet reminds us of the words of Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita when he says: that the world is a battle field where an individual has to fight like a brave hero and leave behind him fadeless footprints on the sands of time which coming generations may feel inspired to follow. This is the type of dynamics which the heart of the young man in the subtitle of the poem wants to hear from the psalmist. Unfortunately most of the Christian psalmists as well as the preachers of other faiths and religions deliver uninspiring messages from their pulpits. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is different.  He is a new age motivator and inspirer for a full-spirited active life each moment of the day of a very short life where each individual has a lot of work to do. 

            The poem reads as follows:

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 it goal;

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and no sorrow

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us further 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, ---in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead.

Lives of great me all remind us

We can 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 labour and to wait.

                                                                                    --------G. R. Kanwal