His verse romance Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), written in Virgilian dactylic hexameter, expounds the legend of Acadian lovers separated on the day they were to be wed when the English expelled French Canadian Acadians from Nova Scotia. The book won admiration on both sides of the Atlantic, and became the most celebrated American poem of the century.
The following poem, published in 1838, is one of several from Longfellow widely shared in classrooms and anthologized in school textbooks — making it well known to a wide readership. It appeared in his early collection, Voices of the Night (1839).
Longfellow is honoured in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, which few other Americans have been.
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.
*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: first post, second post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.
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