Analysis Of A Psalm Of Life By Longfellow

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In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “A Psalm of Life”, he expresses two key values: to be zealous about living and to appreciate life in its entirety. From the start of the poem, Longfellow contends that “life is but an empty dream!” and that it is not a fantasy, far-fetched, and difficult to create into a good reality. He believes “the soul is dead that slumbers”, because those souls have lost the motivation for life as they think “the grave is its [ultimate] goal”. I agree with Longfellow with this value, because if a person doesn’t have a passion to live, then he/she won’t have the will to accomplish anything. The passion serves as the hero of a person’s life, and without that passion we will be “like, dumb, driven cattle” who don’t have

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