LIFE IS NOT AN EMPTY DRUM

LIFE IS NOT AN EMPTY DRUM

The American poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow says in one of his  lyrics  A PSALM OF LIFE:  Tell me not in mournful numbers, /Life is but an empty dream! This great poet was born on 27h February 1807 at Portland in the United States and passed away on 24^th March 1882 at Cambridge in the same country.  

Writing about his poetic qualities, Arthur Compton-Rickett, the author of A History of English Literature (1940), says: Longfellow’s appeal lies chiefly in his intimate simplicity and the tender humanity. He does not deal with recondite aspects of human life, but with the universal emotions of love, pity, faith and hope. He adds: there is a direct and engaging friendliness and a sweet sanity of outlook that, though easily ridiculed, are matters of grateful remembrance.

The PSALM OF LIFE which is being reproduced here is undoubtedly a lyric of grateful remembrance.  It is one of most popular inspirational poems. The poet’s very statement in the beginning that he does not want to hear in mournful numbers that life is but an empty dream, sets the tone of the poem. To put it very briefly, this compact Psalm is the quintessence of many philosophies of illusion and reality, body and soul, contemplation and dynamism and the purpose of human life. 

As regards dreams, the American transcendentalist Frederick Henry Hedge (1805-1890) holds that dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which, if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or a Shakespeare.

Longfellow believes that every individual can get motivated and inspired by the exemplary deeds of great men and like them leave behind footprints on the sands of time. What he needs is an outstanding model, and a marvellous ideal to encourage and animate him.

I don’t consider dreams as hollow bubbles on the watery surface of a river. They have massive substance in them. In fact, most of them are would-be realities for the times to come. The present is always the production of the dreams of the past,  and so is destined to be the future outcome of the dreams of the present.

The full text of the poem follows

:

                                                THE PSALM OF LIFE

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 further than today.

 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still like, muffled drums, are beating

Funeral march 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 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.

 

                                    ---------

8th October 2020                                                  G. R. Kanwal