Longfellows' Psalm of Life

A Psalm of Life

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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I love this poem " a forlorn and ship wrecked brother, seeing shall take heart again."

Today I watched a bit of Brad Pitt's movie Fight Club. I didn't want to watch it but caved in cause they keep putting it on. This clip is what I watched and it was shocking and then I turned to another station still asking myself why I watched it in the first place.

The message was "when you've lost everything you are free to do anything."

Everything is ok.

Easy enough when you have a bottle of vinegar to take away the scorching pain if
indeed it worked. lol

Imagine there not being something to counter lye?

There would be no message.

Brad Pitts' world of insane self destruction, would not exist.

What kind of world is it, when to get to know oneself and to feel,
one has to fall into the depths of hell?

What about men like Mel Gibson in Brave heart who knew love? 

You don't sell out to evil is the message.

Evil, that thinks it can hurt families, women and children and keep people in fear, pain and suffering every day and slaves, since birth.

 Gibson was a patriot of Scotland, who died as he lived, a warrior poet, winning freedom.

This was a good message to send people

The aim of life is not to suffer and not to create a world where your children have to, that is if they are ever born, in a world consisting and becoming nothing but drugs and violence, Darwins' survival of the fittest, to survive.

But then even Darwins' dogs can be killed because muscle is useless without a brain behind it.

To get a brain to survive, one must live in enlightenment, where doors open to friendly faces, 

full of good will for learning to take place, and people thirsting for it.

A brain thirsting for knowledge is a better brain than one filled with desire to maim , enslave and kill.

Children should be raised in a Garden of Eden and not in the depths of hell.

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

xoxoxoxoxxo