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"A Psalm of Life" is a poem written by American writer
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and '' Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely tra ...
, often subtitled "What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist".Gale, 202 Longfellow wrote the poem not long after the death of his first wife and while thinking about how to make the best of life. It was first published anonymously in 1838 before being included in a collection of Longfellow's poems the next year. Its inspirational message has made it one of Longfellow's most famous poems.


Composition and publication history

Longfellow wrote the poem shortly after completing lectures on German writer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...
and was heavily inspired by him. He was also inspired to write it by a heartfelt conversation he had with friend and fellow professor at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
Cornelius Conway Felton; the two had spent an evening "talking of matters, which lie near one's soul:–and how to bear one's self doughtily in Life's battle: and make the best of things". The next day, he wrote "A Psalm of Life". Longfellow was further inspired by the death of his first wife, Mary Storer Potter,Calhoun, 137 and attempted to convince himself to have "a heart for any fate". The poem was first published in the October 1838 issue of ''
The Knickerbocker ''The Knickerbocker'', or ''New-York Monthly Magazine'', was a literary magazine of New York City, founded by Charles Fenno Hoffman in 1833, and published until 1865. Its long-term editor and publisher was Lewis Gaylord Clark, whose "Editor's Ta ...
'', though it was attributed only to "L." Longfellow was promised five dollars for its publication, though he never received payment. This original publication also included a slightly altered quote from Richard Crashaw as an
epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...
: "Life that shall send / A challenge to its end, / And when it comes, say, 'Welcome, friend.'" "A Psalm of Life" and other early poems by Longfellow, including " The Village Blacksmith" and "
The Wreck of the Hesperus "The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a narrative poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in ''Ballads and Other Poems'' in 1842. It is a story that presents the tragic consequences of a skipper's pride. On an ill-fated voyag ...
", were collected and published as ''Voices of the Night'' in 1839. This volume sold for 75 cents and, by 1842, had gone into six editions.Pelaez, 54 In the summer of 1838, Longfellow wrote "The Light of Stars", a poem which he called "A Second Psalm of Life". His 1839 poem inspired by the death of his wife, "Footsteps of Angels", was similarly referred to as "Voices of the Night: A Third Psalm of Life". Another poem published in ''Voices of the Night'' titled "The Reaper and the Flowers" was originally subtitled "A Psalm of Death".


Analysis

The poem, written in an ABAB pattern, is meant to inspire its readers to live actively, and neither to lament the past nor to take the future for granted. The didactic message is underscored by a vigorous trochaic meter and frequent exclamation. Answering a reader's question about the poem in 1879, Longfellow himself summarized that the poem was "a transcript of my thoughts and feelings at the time I wrote, and of the conviction therein expressed, that Life is something more than an idle dream." Richard Henry Stoddard referred to the theme of the poem as a "lesson of endurance".Pelaez, 55 Longfellow wrote "A Psalm of Life" at the beginning of a period in which he showed an interest in the Judaic, particularly strong in the 1840s and 1850s. More specifically, Longfellow looked at the American versions or American responses to Jewish stories. Most notable in this strain is the poet's "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport", inspired by the
Touro Cemetery :: Touro Synagogue Cemetery (also known as the Jewish Cemetery at Newport), dedicated in 1677, is located in the colonial historic district of Newport, Rhode Island, not far from the Touro Synagogue. Other Jewish graves are found nearby as part of ...
in
Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New ...
. Further, the influence of Goethe was noticeable. In 1854, an English acquaintance suggested "A Psalm of Life" was merely a translation. Longfellow denied this, but admitted he may have had some inspiration from him as he was writing "at the beginning of my life poetical, when a thousand songs were ringing in my ears; and doubtless many echoes and suggestions will be found in them. Let the fact go for what it is worth". Modern scholar
Angela Sorby Angela Sorby is an American poet, professor, and literary scholar. Biography She was born in Seattle, Washington and teaches at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her main teaching areas are American literature and creative writing and ...
notes that, despite it being one of his earlier poems, "A Psalm of Life" embodies Longfellow's strongest messaging for young people to seek greatness. She further notes the message is even stronger than other examples of his works with similar themes like "
Paul Revere's Ride "Paul Revere's Ride" is an 1860 poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that commemorates the actions of American patriot Paul Revere on April 18, 1775, although with significant inaccuracies. It was first published in the January 1 ...
" and ''
The Song of Hiawatha ''The Song of Hiawatha'' is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his ...
''.


Response

"A Psalm of Life" became a popular and oft-quoted poem, such that Longfellow biographer Charles Calhoun noted it had risen beyond being a poem and into a cultural artifact. Among its many quoted lines are "footprints on the sands of time". In 1850, Longfellow recorded in his journal of his delight upon hearing it quoted by a minister in a sermon, though he was disappointed when no member of the congregation could identify the source. Not long after Longfellow's death, biographer Eric S. Robertson noted, "The 'Psalm of Life,' great poem or not, went straight to the hearts of the people, and found an echoing shout in their midst. From the American pulpits, right and left, preachers talked to the people about it, and it came to be sung as a hymn in churches." The poem was widely translated into a variety of languages, including
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...
.
Joseph Massel Joseph Massel (also Yoysef Yechezkel Mazl), born in Wjasin near Vilna, Russia, 1850; Manchester, 1912) was a Zionist activist, writer, Hebrew poet and translator. Biography Massel emigrated from Russia to Manchester, England in 1895 where he wor ...
translated the poem, as well as others from Longfellow's later collection '' Tales of a Wayside Inn'', into Hebrew. By 1879, the poem was included in the sixth edition of
McGuffey Readers The Eclectic Readers (commonly, but informally known as the McGuffey Readers) were a series of graded primers for grade levels 1–6. They were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, and ...
. Calhoun also notes that "A Psalm of Life" has become one of the most frequently memorized and most ridiculed of English poems, with an ending reflecting "Victorian cheeriness at its worst". Modern critics have dismissed its "sugar-coated pill" promoting a false sense of security. Nevertheless, Longfellow scholar Robert L. Gale referred to "A Psalm of Life" as "the most popular poem ever written in English". One story has it that a man once approached Longfellow and told him that a worn, hand-written copy of "A Psalm of Life" saved him from suicide.
Edwin Arlington Robinson Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 – April 6, 1935) was an American poet and playwright. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three occasions and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Early life Robins ...
, an admirer of Longfellow's, likely was referring to this poem in his "Ballade by the Fire" with his line, "Be up, my soul". Despite Longfellow's dwindling reputation among modern readers and critics, "A Psalm of Life" remains one of the few of his poems still anthologized.Irmscher, 19


Notes


References

*Calhoun, Charles C. ''Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life''. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. . *Einboden, Jeffrey. ''Nineteenth-Century US Literature in Middle Eastern Languages''. Edinburgh University Press, 2013. *Gale, Robert L. ''A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. *Gruesz, Kirsten Silva. "Feeling for the Fireside: Longfellow, Lynch, and the Topography of Poetic Power" in ''Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture'' (Mary Chapman and Glenn Hendler, editors). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. *Irmscher, Christoph. ''Longfellow Redux''. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. *Pelaez, Monica. "'A Love of Heaven and Virtue': Why Longfellow Sentimentalizes Death" in ''Reconsidering Longfellow'' (Christoph Irmscher and Robert Arbour, editors). Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014. *Sorby, Angela. ''Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865–1917''. Lebanon, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005: 25. *Thompson, Lawrance. ''Young Longfellow (1807–1843)''. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938.


External links


Original publication
in ''
The Knickerbocker ''The Knickerbocker'', or ''New-York Monthly Magazine'', was a literary magazine of New York City, founded by Charles Fenno Hoffman in 1833, and published until 1865. Its long-term editor and publisher was Lewis Gaylord Clark, whose "Editor's Ta ...
''
A Psalm of Life
read by Rev.
Michael E. Haynes Michael E. Haynes (May 9, 1927 – September 12, 2019) was an American minister and politician in the state of Massachusetts. His parents, Gustavus and Edna, were immigrants from Barbados.Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original c ...
and the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...

Annotated version
of the poem, genius.com

by Don Meyer, PhD, Huffpost.com, 2/13/2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Psalm of Life Poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Works published anonymously Works originally published in The Knickerbocker