Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882 / Portland, Maine)

Beautiful affirmation of Life.

Life is to live realistically and be an example unto others despite all its strife but the soul is eternal!
well-written poem of advice to all human beings to follow.
Dr John Celes

Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. ...lines of motivation in stormy times! Kudos to this poet

Love, love, love this poem! In my 8th grade English class I had to pick a poem to recite and break down and this was the poem I chose. I loved it then and still love it to this day! Longfellow is one of my top 5 favorite poets of all time and I will never forget this one. Thanks for posting it for the world to ENJOY!

Thanks, poemhunter.com, for providing this poem to the readers. So happy to read this again, like I have found a lost jewel. When I was in high school, I happened to memorize this poem by heart and used it for declamation contest. I think this is one of the poems that helped me fall in love with the English language. I come from a country with 87 languages and I have my own mother tongue, Cebuano, among the 87. But to be given the chance to articulate and recite beautiful poems in the author's original language is a great instrument of learning such a foreign language. I like the idea that poem.hunter. com displays poems of the known poets throughout the centuries. Thank you very much.

My dear old grandmother used to say to me Life is real! Life is earnest! , and I never knew exactly what she meant, or where she had picked up that phrase. One day, when I was older and she had passed away, I asked my grandfather about it, and he said, Oh, that's from an old poem by Longfellow, and he began to recite it.

I tracked it down and read it, and was amazed. Why had I never known of this wonderful poem? It was about then that I realised how important the 19th Century poets were and began seeking them out. The 20th Century prejudice against them, I realised, was shallow and mean-spirited, and symptomatic of so much that is wrong with modern progressive culture. Read this poem, contemplate its meaning, memorize it, and recite it to your friends. You might leave a footprint on the sands of time for some lost benighted soul.

I really like the poem.... this is the best poem I have ever read....

What a poem with a positive thrust! The drive of the poem is like a marching song!
We are nobody before him in handling such a theme in simple and yet strong verses. He is very positive to the end.
'Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.'... We should never miss this idea in our life. It is very disappointing to see that our major junk of poetry do not certainly give a hand to such a shipwrecked brother to find his life once again. We handle very negative ideas to further drive such forlorn brothers into the depthless sea. It is time we reflected on this idea. And the last line! I am simply dumb founded. May god bless this philosopher poet.

I believe there is an error in the line 'Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest.'
I recall it as 'Dust thou art, to dust returneth.'

This poem is amazing, I like your work. A life full now that is unknow and worth wating to living for. Tommorow may be pland but what will realy happen is realy unknow but, it's worth waiting for.