A Psalm of Life

Several day ago a friend (thanks MM) shared this Longfellow poem with me and I was moved.  I believe that poetry is not only to be written but spoken.  That is where we experience the emotions of what has been penned.  So I went ISO (In Search Of) these words voiced.  I felt like Goldilocks.  This one’s too fast, this one’s too slow, this one’s too emphatic.  So, I did what every artist does.  They find something that inspires and makes it their own.  This is my “Cover” (reading) of A Psalm of Life, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did giving his 178 year old words life again.

A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

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.

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