Help me userstand this poem!

iceraider

Hi I need help translating this poem, can you guys help me understand each stanza, what I have to do is "discuss which values in the poem Americans still use today"

Please Help :-)

"Psalm of Life" by Henry 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 art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

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 sands of time;--

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn 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.

dalecosp

Originally posted by iceraider
Hi I need help translating this poem, can you guys help me understand each stanza, what I have to do is "discuss which values in the poem Americans still use today"

Please Help :-)

Translating it to what?

And the discussion question is quite liable to cause fierce discussion if anyone gives a tinker's d---, but it's equally likely that apathy will win the day.

In which case, the apathetic should read the poem. 😃

vaaaska

I think this is rather easy to dig into...but I do have a degree in lit and sitting around talking about poems was much of what we did.

I'm not expert on Longfellow, however...

He was a direct descendant of people who came from England. These puritans were an odd bunch if you ask me - they claimed all kinds of torture in the old land when it seems they were really interested in becoming slave holders and capitalists.

Longfellow, it is claimed, wanted to create an 'American' mythology. If you've ever read something like 'The Odyssey' or 'The Illiad' you would pick up on some things here. Both of those, ummm works (all billions pages of them), make you feel extremely rooted to humanity and at the same time it's quite uplifting to know that you are connected to this greater thing. I think that's what he's doing here.

The Puritans allegedly believed in hard work ("it's hard work" says George Bush). A faith-based work initiative if you will (oh god, I'm starting to annoy myself). Anyways, this is certainly a faith-based poem initiative.

Perhaps he was telling his students (I think he taught at Harvard) to believe the beliefs, work hard, be humble and pious and holy and such "with a heart for any fate." Oh, what's his name? Ah, Ezekiel - your resident crazy bible man who was a leader and a 'hero'.

The second to the last line get's me, is this for real?

Still achieving, still pursuing,

He should have been writing copy for MS! For an even more obtuse angle on that read the lyrics of "Empire" by David Byrne (yes, this a cynical, cynical song).

http://www.talking-heads.net/lyrics_backwards.html#4

Don't know if that helps. It was kind of fun doing that, even if it sucked. I haven't done that in many years. Perhaps I'll so some more now.

bubblenut

I haven't read it but it seems to be along the lines of

$verses=9;
$vlines=4;
//Build the dictionary
$dict_file='/usr/share/dict/linux.words';
//quicker than using file()
$fp=fopen($dict_file, 'r') or die('Failed to open dictionary file');
$buffer='';
while(!feof($fp)) {
  $buffer.=fgets($fp, 1024);
}
$dict=explode("\n", $buffer);
$dict_c=count($dict);

//Build the punctuation list
$punct=array(',', '.', '!', ';');
//They're not after every word so stick some blanks in
$punct=array_pad($punct, 10, '');
$punct_c=count($punct);

for($i=0; $i<$verses; $i++) {
  for($j=0; $j<$vlines; $j++) {
    for($k=0, $lwords=mt_rand(5,8); $k<$lwords; $k++) {
      $poem.=$dict[mt_rand(0,$dict_c)].$punct[mt_rant(0, $punct_c)].' ';
    }
    $poem.="\n";
  }
  $poem.="\n";
}
?>

I wrote this originally as a flippant reply to a rather bizarre question to be found in a programming forum (don't take offence I'm only having a laugh). Then I read the poem and thought of a buzz-phrase, "Protestant work ethic". Although I'm sure it's not going to be much help for this particular piece of work, I read a book on the subject recently which was really interesting. It's called The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the New Economy.

[edit]
I just re-read your actual question and realized that the hacker ethic may well be relevant. After all, it is a work ethic which is followed by an appreciable proportion of the population.
[/edit]