PSALM OF LIFE
'A psalm of life ' is beautiful didactic poem by H.W. Longfellow , A modern American poet .
Longfellow is known as a poet of the lost generation he spent some of the years in America and after that he went back to England .He spent a number of poems both shorter and longer to his credit .They are Hiawatha, Cymbleline ,voice in the night ,Ballads and other poems, Tales of way side inn , The courtship of miles standish and the Belfry of Burges .His poems were very popular in England .He was the best friend of Alfred Tennyson .His poem became the common property of English men everywhere from the British Asles to Antipodes .In his poems there are elements of Romanticism .His poems are also marked by simplicity and love of the common place .He was so popular in America that his 75th birthday y was celebrated in every school in the united state .
"A PSALM OF LIFE" is a beautiful didactic poem by H.W. Longfellow .Its subtitle is what the Heart Of The Youngman said to the psalmist .Here the poet tells us about his optimistic views on life . The poem was 1st published in October 1838 .The poet rejects the views of pessimists regarding life .He is an optimist so he is not ready to believe that life is as unreal or hollow as a dream .He is not ready to believe that the soul dies with the body and thing are not so as they appear from outside .To him life is a serious affair .It is real and the soul is imperishable while the body is perishable .neither enjoyment nor sorrow is the end of life .The main purpose of life is to work so that each new day should be different from the last day .Knowledge is vast or unlimited while time is limited .It is therefore our duty to acquire unlimited knowledge in limited time .physically we are sound but our heart that is like a covered drum is leading us to the last syllable of the recorded time .The world is a field of battle and we are soldiers .We have to face the problems of life like brave soldiers that we are .We have not to behave like dumb animals .We have not to trust in the future because who has seen the future .We cannot bring the past back so the only time before us is the present .We have to work in that present with god as our guide .We can learn a lot from the lives of great men .Like them we have to leave our footprint symbolic of noble deeds behind us .By following them we can make our life great .These footprint will help those who have lost hope in life .They will take courage by seeing these footprints to move forward .So the advise of the poet is to be very active .always doing new work .This is how we can achieve something great .
The poem is remarkable in the sense that it gives us a massage to work .Every line of the poem is meaningful and the diction used by the poet is also suitable for the massage he wants to give the reader .The poet has used simile ,Metaphor ,Personification ,alliteration and Repetition ,figures of speech to beautify the poem .There is parallelism in the lines 'not enjoyment nor sorrow is our destined ' and 'art is long time is flitting '. The imagery used by the poet is also meaningful .This would has been compared to a field of battle .Life is a temporary tent and our heart is like a covered drum beating every second and leading us to the last syllable of the recorded time .Again the journey of life has been compared to a voyage in the sea .The ups and downs of life are like the tide in the sea .All the lines are iambic tetrameter .
