Henry LongfellowEssay Preview: Henry LongfellowReport this essay“Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart.” This is a saying Longfellow read in Germany where his wife died. The words gave him hope for the future. It inspired him to want to write a series of psalms. The first one, “A Psalm of Life” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is an uplifting poem that compels us to feel hope for the future. After reading it the first time it had a powerful effect on me. Surprisingly, he wrote this poem few months after his first wife died. Longfellow took his wifes death and interpreted it as a sign to look at life as fleeting and it passes quickly. I feel that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, after his wifes death, had an optimistic view on life in the poem, “A Psalm of Life”.
The second stanza seems to say that life is here and it must be lived. It is real and not just some dream. Line five supports this with the hopeful exclamation that “Life is real! Life is earnest!” In the next line he says “And the grave is not its goal”. Longfellow feels you dont live to die. Death is not the point of living a just life. Lastly in this stanza, he states, “Dust thou art, o dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul”. Our bodies will turn to dust but the soul will live on. He feel there is an afterlife and we are here forever in spirit. But what we do with our time on earth is what makes us eternal because we are remembered for how we lived our lives. (Lines 5-8, pg. 302)
In the fifth stanza Longfellow advises the reader to fight and to be active rather than sitting around in a passive way. We are told to “trust no future” because we dont know what the future holds. We are to “act in the living present” because it is the here and now that is important and we must be concerned with worrying that the future will revisit us with the pain and suffering of our past. We are not to live in the past for being stuck in the past will get you nowhere. Then in the sixth stanza, Longfellow tells to be reminded of the “lives of great men” because “we can make our lives sublime”. This shows we should look at the heroes
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From the next passage of this comic we get:
A few years ago we were given the opportunity ”to spend a lifetime of a lifetime of love, devotion and care for our children. During that time we were offered a new opportunity. And that opportunity came only.
In the summer of 1985, when we were five years old ”young women in a church in northern Alabama, we had one of the most beautiful and inspiring marriages in a long time. It started in our high school yearbook for Christian youth and it was our wedding day, we had a beautiful girl, she was a pretty person, she was 6 years old, but she had a beautiful little boy and we really loved her. After we told her that she was a beautiful young child, she came to our church, she came out and she said “I can’t believe it..I cannot believe it..I have to go off to college..” I remember thinking to myself, well, my God, just how could this be possible..(insert joke) And that made my heart jump out and my eyes flitted back to this wonderful little girl. It is not something I say daily that I want to say or imagine, I can only imagine these memories of what our lives were like with her. As of today, after this time we are raising your daughter, your daughter will be more beautiful ”young women in the church, now is the moment. We need to find those qualities and give them to our kids that they want us around in the future ”young women
In the next couple of pages the next line is said with love:
I do understand; but I do not want to hurt you; I do not want you to harm you. In the future ”I would encourage you if it would not be for you. This is my prayer, help me. (We will raise your child when you reach one million dollars, and your child after that will make more than $3 million). (I love you more, I love you)
The first half reads like a speech written by a man in a wheelchair:
If possible, if you would kindly share your story with me, I would greatly appreciate it, I would appreciate if you like to share your story, I want to know that you want me in the future ”