LONGFELLOW

"A Psalm of Life"

'Life that shall send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes, say, 'Welcome, friend.'

What the Heart of the Young Man Said
             to the Psalmist

We will leave the woods and go to the seashore, where she sells sea shells. So, don't just tell me in your soulful songs ("numbers"), your soulful poetry that life is only an empty dream, this Cartesian idea that everything around us is an illusion. He says that there is more there than that, and he is calling upon us to live. Again the transcendentalist thesis, you have to live your life. So, the idea that you are just the clay of the earth, the ground, the dust, and that's all you will be. But that is not the soul. There is more to the human than the physical. Life itself is beyond that. All right, do you see the romantic side of that? We aren't just thinking. We are acting. Will and energy combined. Also, the ancient or medieval idea carpe diem (seize the day). As I say, the idea comes down from the Medieval Period, you don't know where you will be tomorrow or next week, so you have to live today. Life passes by too fast to sit in neutral. Your heart is ticking off what's left of your life. Every time it beats, that is one less heart beat that you have left. You're winding down like a watch. This is our old friend memento mori (reminder of death).
Also, remember how fast time flies, and this is a related theme tempus fugit (time flies), therefore carpe diem. If time did not fly, if we had forever, then relax, what's the hurry. But if time does fly, if we had only a limited amount of time to do things, then we have to them done while we can. Well, how do you become a hero? You become a hero by acting as your own agent. Heroic action is your own action. Not just following along with what everybody is doing. So, being a hero in the strife, he is calling us to be heroic in our own lives. This says our primary focus is the present. That's all we have. Do you have all those years you that have already lived? Do you have the future? All we ever have is the present. Even if you lived thirty-thousand years, throughout all that time all you would have would be the present moment. The fact, past is beyond our reach; the future is not yet there. So, we have to live now. Nevertheless, he does make allowances for a relationship with the past and the future, which is a bit unusual. When we see others in the past, we are building on what they did, and then we are leaving footsteps in the sands of time that somebody else may see before they are obliterated by the tide. Somebody lands on this desolate shore, and sees your footsteps they will know that they are following in someone's trail, and be encouraged. Someone was here. So, we do base something of our lives on the past. We do live in such a way that we will leave something for the future, but the primary focus is still the present. We need to be moving on out, which I guess is what we will do now. . . .