The poet Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low (1807–1882) is prob­a­bly best known over here in the UK for his Song of Hiawatha (which I for one remem­ber doing at school), but also in his native US for his com­mem­o­ra­tive poem about that icon­ic event of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, Paul Revere’s Ride. He also com­posed the epic poem Evan­ge­line, about that shame­ful episode in British his­to­ry known as the Great Upheaval, or the Expul­sion of the Aca­di­ans, dur­ing the French and Indi­an War of 1754–1763. This was the forced depor­ta­tion by the British of thou­sands of the large­ly civil­ian pop­u­la­tions from the Cana­di­an Mar­itime provinces to oth­er colonies (includ­ing Span­ish Louisiana where the Aca­di­ans would become “Cajuns”, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry).

In addi­tion to the lengthy sto­ry­telling poet­ry, how­ev­er, there is also a short and sim­ple poem for which Longfel­low is cel­e­brat­ed, the inspi­ra­tional A Psalm of Life. First pub­lished in 1838 in the New York mag­a­zine The Knicker­bock­er, it is a sub­tle glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of life and its pos­si­bil­i­ties. As with Max Ehrmann’s Desider­a­ta and Rud­yard Kipling’s If, the poem is didac­tic in tone: an invo­ca­tion to mankind to fol­low the right path and think pos­i­tive­ly about life.

Its sub­ti­tle is What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist, which cre­ates some con­text: it is a psalm in response to a psalm. It is an objec­tion to the idea, gleaned by the nar­ra­tor from lis­ten­ing to some bib­li­cal teach­ing, that this human life is not impor­tant; that we are made of dust and will even­tu­al­ly return to dust. No! he says — life is real, it’s seri­ous, and this is not a drill…your body may return to dust but you have a soul so don’t squan­der your time here by wor­ry­ing about death. As the sev­enth stan­za says, we can make our lives sub­lime, and, depart­ing, leave behind us foot­prints on the sands of time…

I can’t do oth­er than endorse that thought! Now, read on…

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.