FROM A PSALM OF LIFE

 

                   FROM A PSALM OF LIFE

Here are three concluding stanzas from one of the most inspirational poems by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). The language is so simple and the message in each stanza is so clear that even a junior school student needs no help to understand them. The stanzas read as follows:

            “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.

                        ********

G.R..Kanwal

1^st December 2023