Longfellows Optimism In Writing A Psalm Of free essay sample

Life Essay, Research Paper Look non mournfully into the yesteryear. It comes non back once more. Wisely better the present. It is thine. Travel forth to run into the shadowy hereafter, without fright, and with a manful bosom. This is a stating Longfellow read in Germany where his married woman died. The words gave him hope for the hereafter. It inspired him to desire to compose a series of Psalmss. The first one, A Psalm of Life written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is an uplifting verse form that compels us to experience hope for the hereafter. After reading it the first clip it had a powerful consequence on me. Surprisingly, he wrote this poem few months after his first married woman died. Longfellow took his married woman s decease and interpreted it as a mark to look at life as fleeting and it passes rapidly. I feel that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, after his married woman s decease, had an optimistic position on life in the verse form, A Psalm of Life. We will write a custom essay sample on Longfellows Optimism In Writing A Psalm Of or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The 2nd stanza seems to state that life is here and it must be lived. It is existent and non merely some dream. Line five supports this with the hopeful exclaiming that Life is existent! Life is earnest! In the following line he says And the grave is non its end. Longfellow feels you don t live to decease. Death is non the point of populating a merely life. Last in this stanza, he states, Dust thou art, o dust returnest, was non spoken of the psyche. Our organic structures will turn to dust but the psyche will populate on. He experience there is an hereafter and we are here everlastingly in spirit. But what we do with our clip on Earth is what makes us ageless because we are remembered for how we lived our lives. ( Lines 5-8, pg. 302 ) In the 5th stanza Longfellow advises the reader to contend and to be active instead than sitting around in a inactive manner. We are told to swear no hereafter because we don t know what the hereafter holds. We are to move in the life nowadays because it is the here and now that is of import and w vitamin E must be concerned with badgering that the hereafter will revisit us with the hurting and agony of our yesteryear. We are non to populate in the yesteryear for being stuck in the yesteryear will acquire you nowhere. Then in the 6th stanza, Longfellow tells to be reminded of the lives of great work forces because we can do our lives sublime. This shows we should look at the heroes of the yesteryear, emulate them, and follow their leads. In making this you yourself can go a hero and leave footmarks on the littorals of clip. We must endeavor to do a difference in the lives of the hereafter so we may populate on forever. ( Lines25-32, pg. 302 ) In the concluding stanza, Longfellow is nudging us to work toward accomplishing our end no affair what the hereafter holds. We must be up and making and non sitting around watching life travel by. We can t be afraid and we must populate with a bosom for any destiny. He is stating that we must accept destiny as portion of the program for the greater good of all adult male. We must neer give up in accomplishing our end because there is hope for the hereafter. You have to maintain on acquiring up after you fall and seek once more or you will neer carry through anything meaningful. Last, you must larn to labour and to wait. Hard work and forbearance is what Longfellow is naming for in this concluding line. He is promoting us to work with our Black Marias full of optimism for a bright hereafter. ( Lines 34-36, pg. 303 ) I feel that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, after his married woman s decease, had an optimistic mentality in A Psalm of Life. It encourages you to travel out and accomplish things. It seems he felt a new resoluteness to populate a more fulfilling life after his depression lifted. He shows through his poesy a renewed involvement in traveling off from the yesteryear that had troubled him. Something in his life gave him outlooks and hope to populate each twenty-four hours to the fullest and be confident the hereafter would non revisit him with more wretchedness.