What the heart of the young man said to the Psalmist
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 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.
Examination of the Poem
In this nine-refrain sonnet, the initial six verses are somewhat unclear since every verse appears to start a novel idea. All things considered, the accentuation here is on an inclination instead of an objective line of reasoning. What feeling? It is by all accounts a response against science, which is centered around computations ("sorrowful numbers") and experimental proof, of which there is no, or very little, to demonstrate the presence of the spirit. Longfellow lived when the Industrial Revolution was in high stuff and the goals of science, sanity, and reason prospered. According to this point of view, the way that the initial six verses don't follow a sane line of reasoning bodes well.
As per the sonnet, the power of science appears to control one's soul or soul ("for the spirit is dead that sleeps"), lead to inaction and smugness from which we should break free ("Act,— act in the living Present! /Heart inside, and God o'erhead!") for elevated purposes, for example, Art, Heart, and God as quickly as possible ("Art is long, and Time is transient"). The last three verses—which, having broken liberated from science by this point in the sonnet, read all the more easily—recommend that this representing grand purposes can prompt significance and can help our kindred man.
We may consider the whole sonnet a clarion call to do incredible things, but irrelevant they might appear to be in the present and on the exactly detectable surface. That might mean composing a sonnet and entering it into a verse challenge, whenever you know the odds of your sonnet winning are tiny; taking a chance with your life for something you trust in when you realize it isn't famous or it is misjudged; or chipping in for a purpose that, in spite of the fact that it might appear to be miserable, you feel is genuinely significant. Subsequently, the significance of this sonnet lies in its capacity to so unmistakably recommend a strategy for significance in our cutting edge world.
Comments
Post a Comment