A Psalm Of Life

Given that “A Psalm of Life” is constructed essentially as an interior monologue uninterrupted by dissent, uninterested in the dynamics of irony, and uncomplicated by any challenge to its sweeping inspirational message, the analysis of the poem is not strikingly different from its summary. After all, the poem is designed to teach. Because there is no narrative frame, no characters (save abstract two-dimensional philosophical positions, a man, young at heart, and the Christian apologist), really no action (save for a cooperation of striking metaphors, most notably a soldier in battle, a survivor of a mid-ocean shipwreck, and, most famously, those footprints in the sand of a wet beach), the poem is pure message and thus does not reward nor even encourage deep-dive section-by-section, stanza-by-stanza analysis. The poem offers less a theme and more a message, constant and unswerving, indeed reiterated in virtually every stanza. Life is real, life is now, it is time to live it.

After all, the forum Longfellow selected for its publication, Knickerbocker, was a respected monthly magazine known largely during its nearly 30 years of publication less for its promotion of literature as for its publication of elegant biographical and historical essays. Instead of promoting literature, it focused on the new nation, with a commitment to introduce its readers to the natural splendors of the country and in turn advocate for wilderness protection. Its readers, thus, would not be intrigued by complicated confessional introspective poetry that defiantly plumbed the psychology of a feeling poet. Rather, readers would respond to message-driven advocacy verse that sought to use the sculptured and obvious rhythm and rhyme schemes of the genre to further agendas, in this case to encourage the moral life, a poem understandable and unforgettable in first reading.

Thus, Longfellow’s readers would no more analyze “A Psalm of Life” than they would parse a commencement address or dissect a wedding toast or deconstruct a eulogy. The poem values direct address and clear commitment to a single driving idea, and that idea kept inspirational rather than confrontational, optimistic rather than dour, and accessible rather than dense. In turn, they would take to heart its message (easily memorized given the poet’s deft use of easy rhythm and obvious end rhyme) and try to make its optimistic challenge an inspiration for right action and purposeful living. They would quote those memorable lines at appropriate occasions to advocate for not giving up, even when life is its most complicated and its darkest. The message is simple: live every moment, be your own hero, resist the surrender to complacency or, worse, to pessimism. Because Longfellow does not weigh down the poem with specifics—characters or plot or setting or basic situation—the message can be applied to any reader in any situation in any walk of life. Over time, the stanzas with their decidedly uncontroversial message to make the most of life would become part of children’s education, inculcated into school curricula where, in turn, the schoolchildren would dutifully memorize some or even all of the verses and recite them with vigor and drama.

The poem can still challenge the reader, but the challenge is not the classroom challenge of unpacking symbols, detecting irony, or exploring motivation. Rather, the challenge is to finish the poem and then go live a better life. The poem, and the young man who so passionately makes the argument to reject Christian complacency, expects the reader’s life to change. The vision is uncompromising, the challenge unmissable. “Let us, then, be up and doing / With a heart for any fate” (Lines 33-34). The young man brooks no opposition, invites no discussion. In describing the real-time, real world as a “broad field of battle” (Line 17), in suggesting how easy despair can be by comparing some lives to “forlorn and shipwrecked brother[s]” (Line 31), in depicting the quiet desperation of zombie hearts and souls of the living dead to “funeral marches to the grave” (Line 16), and most memorably comparing those who abandon the zest for life to “dumb, driven cattle” (Line 19), the poem at once inspires and goads, lifts up and derides. The poem sets up an absolute either/or that is a keen rhetorical strategy, offering a choice that is really no choice at all: either live a heroic life driven by the expectation that dreams can be fulfilled or live like chattel, dumb and brute beasts, hearts beating like “muffled drums” (Line 15) marching indifferently and inevitably to the grave.

It is an indication of the poem’s humanity that its optimistic message can be applied to a wide range of life experiences. Its lines can be quoted as easily at a college commencement as a wedding, as easily at a bar mitzvah as at a funeral. If the challenge rings as empty cliches often proffered as wisdom in the rhetoric of such occasions, the message has become a cliché because, like all cliches, it harbors a critical truth. Without the commitment to leave some mark, to make some difference, even if it is potentially as ephemeral as footprints left in the sand, the alternative is far bleaker, indeed untenable. The virtues celebrated here are the hard-earned stuff of hope. They are remarkably unremarkable—diligence, commitment, patience--and thus the message is delivered to those who really have no excuse to live any other way than with the realization that life is short, death absolute, and time a gift not to be squandered.