A Psalm of Life
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What The Heart Of The Young Man
Said To The Psalmist.
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.
Running in the Dark
By Roger Poe
He ran through the darkness of life
On a course, unknown, forbidden, full of strife;
Not knowing who to trust or who to call friend;
Not quite sure where it all would end.
As he ran blindly, into the haze,
He found nothing certain to accept his gaze.
He fled for survival like a struggling fawn.
He fled from the prison of being a pawn.
The course he chose had broken the code.
He sat in confinement crushed by the load.
He carried the weight of the world on his back,
Searching in vain to get back on track.
“These children are man's," the ancient one said,
"The boy is ignorance beware him in dread."
Must we accept things just as they are?
Or can they be changed before going too far?
We can be beacons to light up the dark.
We can bring safety just like the ark.
And when a young one is running in fright,
We can show them an end to their night.
The Bridge Builder
By: Will Allen Dromgoole
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me today,
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
Poetic Thoughts
https://thoughtexplorations.blogspot.com/
Life Reel
