Pages

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Footprints

—Anonymous Photo



A PSALM OF LIFE
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

    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.

__________________________

—Medusa, celebrating those footprints in the sand ~
 
For more about Longfellow, go to www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow/.














Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.