Marshall asked 8 years ago
How should we live this life according to the poet/speaker in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘A Psalm of Life’? Or, How does the poem psalm of life guides us towards the perfect art of living? Or, What is the viewpoint of author about life?
In the poem The Psalm of Life the speaker guides us towards the way of ideal living and it conveys the author’s viewpoints about life.
According to the speaker in Longfellow’s poem ‘A Psalm of Life’ this life is ‘not an empty dream’. It is rather real. So it’s important to make the most of this short life. We can set examples before others by achieving great height of success. Thus we can inspire downhearted people to follow our footprints and regain the hope. We should not pay any heed to what the pessimists say. We should not even take the Biblical quote “Dust thou art, to dust thou returnest” literally. We should not even be discouraged by the thought of death. We should not waste time in the thought of the past or dreaming of the future. Rather, we should take this life very seriously, work hard in the present and wait for the rewards patiently.
The poet want us to live an ideal life.He says that enjoyment and sorrow sholud not be the aim of our life.Both enjoyment and sorrow sholud be balanced in our life.In the battlefield we should fight against all the odds and emerge as hero in the struggle.The poet want us to live in the present.We should not trust future however bright it might seem because we often get carried away by the happy dreams about our future and forget to act in the present.We should also forget about past events as we cannot change it.
The poet says that our life is not merely confined within our birth and death.We are born not simply to await death. We should strive to make our life worthy and significant through our diligent and sincere effort to achieve our goal. Our soul has an infinite potential which should be properly exploited so that we may lend a significance to our life through our achievements.
The poet Longfellow, says that we should not waste our time thinking about death instead we should be happy to be live and we should strive hard to reach perfection so that we can give others who are struggling with life inspiration to move on. The poet further believes that the body dies but the soul is immortal. We should also not waste time in thinking about death, we should also not believe in any future however pleasant it may be.