A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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 are, to dust thou 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 sand of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm 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 Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Thanatopsis
by William Cullen Bryant
TO him who in the love of Nature holds
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,-Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
Are but the solemn decorations all
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Into his darker musings, with a mild
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;-Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
And millions in those solitudes, since first
To Nature's teachings, while from all around-The flight of years began, have laid them down
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In silence from the living, and no friend
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Their mirth and their employments, and shall
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
come
To mix for ever with the elements,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man-Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The innumerable caravan which moves
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
soothed
The venerable woods; rivers that move
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
all,
The First Snowfall
by James Russell Lowell
The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.
Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.
From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,
The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down,
And still fluttered down the snow.
I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.
I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.
Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.
Again I looked at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.
I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud-like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe.
And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!"
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.
Snow-Bound [The sun that brief December day]
by John Greenleaf Whittier
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did your nightly chores,-Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow:
And ere the early bed-time came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,-The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea."
The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the somber green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where'er it fell
To make the coldness visible.
Old Ironsides
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Y, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;-The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;-The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,-The lightning of the gale!