windsofchange’s blog

One of my all time favorites which I can recite word to word even if woken up from the middle of a deep sleep…a poem written in many of my notebooks…a poem which holds a deep meaning both in the lines written and the context and the situation through which H W Longfellow emerged from while writing this…Hope you enjoy reading it just as I have done

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 tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

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.

The story behind the psalm………

copied from “Light from Many Lamps”
edited by Lillian Eichler Watson

“It was early morning. The bright sun streamed through the windows of the Craigie house in Cambridge where George Washington had once had his headquarters, and where a young Harvard professor now lived. He lived, in fact, in the very room that Washington had occupied. And as he stood gazing out of the window at the sloping lawn and the elms, he wondered if Washington might not have stood here once feeling perhaps as he did–unutterably lonely and dejected.

The young man’s wife had died three years ago, but he longed for her still. Time had not softened his grief nor eased the torment of his memories. He turned restlessly from the window and wondered how to spend the time before breakfast. He was a poet too, this young professor; but he had no heart for poetry these days.

He had no heart for anything, it seemed.
Life had become an empty dream.
But this could not go on, he told himself!
He was letting the days slip by, nursing his despondency.
Life was not an empty dream!
He must be up and doing.
Let the dead past bury its dead. . . .

Suddenly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was writing in a surge of inspiration, the lines coming almost too quickly for his racing pen. Longfellow called his poem “A Psalm of Life.”
He put it aside at first, unwilling to show it to anyone; for as he later explained, “it was a voice from my inmost heart, at a time when I was rallying from depression.” But later he allowed it to be published . . .and it went straight to the hearts of millions of people. No poem ever written became so well known so fast. It was taught in schools, recited on the stage, discussed from pulpit and lecture platform. It crossed the ocean, and spread like wildfire through England. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish–even Sanskrit! In China it was printed on a fan and became immensely popular.

A whole generation of school children grew up under the influence of Longfellow’s “Psalm.” Many prominent men later acknowledged that influence with gratitude. Henry Ford, for example, memorized it as a lad, and in later years often said that the sixth and ninth stanzas came back to him all his life,inspiring him to effort and achievement. Firestone also freely acknowledged his indebtedness to the poem, as did many other famous men.

Copied verse acknowledgement of the names done at the beginning of the prose

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep

***************************************************

This poem by Robert Frost is one of my favourites. I have been found guilty of reciting this one many times behind closed doors of my room, standing in front of the mirror. Although I grew up in city my only solace was every summer I would end up in my nanu’s village…It never snows in south India…but the early morning walk through the woods….sitting on the steps of the nearest pond……the sun rising…the chirping of the birds…the first drops of dew on the grass….the tranquility was my equivalent to the snowy woods….Time and again I have gone into a trance…Thought Ill share this with you all….One more of my all time favorites will be coming up soon too…