A Psalm of Life

This is not one that I could ever take credit for writing. It is in fact, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's and it is beyond beautiful.

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 tomorrow
finds us farther than today.

Art is long and time is fleeting,
and our hearts, though stout and brave,
still, like muffled dreams 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 however 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 in the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
sailing o'er lives solemn main,
a forlorn, and a 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.

Wowsers, if that's not beautiful I don't know what is. Life isn't always easy or fair or simple or fun, but the point of life is to improve every day--to DO SOMETHING, to step forward and be the person I always dreamed I could be. Sometimes I feel like a spectator in my own life; someone watching by as I react to what happens around me. No more, world. Here I come--soul unfettered at last. Time for the big guns. I'm sick of waiting for perfect circumstances to announce themselves and ask me to accompany them. It is time for me to make the circumstances ideal and see how the darts fly. Well maybe not darts, maybe more like potato chips or birds or something else soft that doesn't have the tendency to injure people when wielded by someone with no semblance of control or dexterity. Plastic dartboard here I come!