A psalm of life analysis line by line. Poem Analysis of A Parody On “a Psalm Of Life” by Oliver Wendell Holmes for close reading 2019-01-07

A Psalm of Life by Longfellow: Summary & Analysis

That person can find the examples set by us, and can gain courage and hope to move forward. Be a hero in the strife! This poem tells how to live life happily without giving up to any of difficulty that can come across your way. This poem was written by King David, one of the most famous kings that ever reigned in Israel. In 1834, Harvard College offered Longfellow the position of department head of French and Spanish, but, as was the case at Bowdoin, recommended a sojourn in Europe to prepare himself. Longfellow compares this situation of our heart to the beating of the clothed drums at the funeral marches to the grave. His portrait of America as an ardent youth voicing the age-old aspirations of the West had clearly hit the mark. The poet is caught up in the first person point of view, where he is honestly advising the reader.

What Is the Meaning of the of

According to the poet, a person who spends all his time sleeping is already dead. Art is forever, Our hearts beat still towards death, During your time on Earth choose your battles wisely. The speaker goes on to say that life is never all about joy and sorrow. Newspapers on the Continent reprinted it, it appeared in broadside in England, there were two translations into French, and the clergy and gentry distributed it in great numbers among their parishoners and tenants. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived from 1807 to 1882 and was a poet from the time he was eighteen until the end of his life.

Summary of A Psalm of Life by HW Longfellow

David has been recognized as one who was real with God. Life is but an empty dream. According to him life is real and serious, not baseless or useless. To escape the trauma, Longfellow spent the rest of his trip immersed in study in northern Europe—Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden—but he also travelled to Switzerland, where he met the woman who would be his second wife, Fannie Appleton. American Romantic poets include Poe, Melville, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, and Whittier. The speaker continues his discussion of the purpose or point of life, He does not believe, nor will he even consider, the possibility that life is made to suffer through.

Analysis of A Psalm of Life By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — keplarllp.com

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. The amount of trust and confidence expressed in these words is remarkable. The poet begins the poem by asking us not to tell him in sorrowful verses that life is an empty, meaningless dream. It did not need a prematurely old despairer such as the Poe-like H. For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.

A Psalm of Life “Psalm of Life” Summary and Analysis

He sees time as a fleeting or temporary thing. This is the kind of artist America needed. Longfellow wrote in a period known as Romanticism: a 19th-century American movement in which poetry and philosophy was concerned with placing high concern on emotion and embraced the exotic and unfamiliar. Later, in the Christian New Testament, Jesus Christ refers to his followers as sheep, and he is the shepherds. Later, Longfellow taught at Harvard College. Lines 25-28 In the seventh stanza, the speaker asks the reader to consider past heroes. Such critical attitudes as those above suggest a relationship between popularity and lack of aesthetic value.

A Psalm of Life

Paraphrase Do not tell me that life is hopeless, for the person that does nothing is dead, and you have much to discover. Cournot writes Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth. Waiting can be a sort of labor itself, and labor for its own sake does not bring satisfaction or meaning. We related to this poem quite a bit, and thought how the author author used imagery and figurative speech was really rad. He wants to indicate that our works remain in this world even after our death. In general, however, the dialogue corresponds to the voices of two distinct historical eras.

Analysis of A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The end of the era is more difficult to estimate: some say that it was replaced by the Victorian Era the instant that Queen Victoria took over the throne of England in 1837, while others mark its end as late as 1870, with the death of novelist. Even so, he is considered an important figure in American poetry, if not for what he achieved, then for the way he brought poetry from the fringes to the center of American culture. If it takes courage to set sail on the sea of life, it might be said that the boat stands for the courage to keep oneself afloat. Act,— act in the living Present! The third stanza of A Psalm of Life is about the ideal way of living. Parrington, Vernon Louis, The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800-1860, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1972.

A Psalm of Life

The poem ends, then, as it began, with a word of caution and of hope. What the poet means to say is that our days on Earth are numbered and every day takes us closer to the end. He published a collection of essays that earned him a professorship at Harvard University. The poem highlights the views of the poet about how to live life and that there is only one life and therefore, we should make a good use of it. Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; In the seventh stanza of the poem, the poet says that the lives of so many great and successful men remind us that we can also achieve those heights if we wish and strive for that. The young man can ask no nobler hymn of battle, with which to march, like the soldier of antiquity, into the momentous conflict which awaits him, when the calm enjoyments of early life are over, and his years of labor, anxiety, suffering, perhaps of victory, begin. The nineteen-year-old Longfellow landed at in June of 1826.