poem

A Psalm of Life — Aug 17, 2026

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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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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📖 About this poem

This is Longfellow at his most rallying—a young man talking back to gloom, insisting life isn't a rehearsal for the grave but the main event. The poem moves like a pep talk set to a march: short trochaic lines that thump along, drumbeat-steady, which suits its central image of "muffled drums beating funeral marches to the grave." That's the poem's dark undertow, quickly answered by its brighter picture of footprints left on "the sands of time," found by some "forlorn and shipwrecked brother" who takes heart again. It's earnest almost to the point of blushing, but that sincerity is exactly why it endures. Stripped of Victorian polish, the message is plain and still useful: don't just endure your days, act in them. Anyone who's needed a nudge to get up and try again will recognize the pulse under these lines.

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