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"Let us, then, be up and doing". (Essays).(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and "A Psalm of Life")(Critical Essay)

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From: ANQ
Date: 20030622
Author:Peck, David R.

In the concluding quatrain of his most famous poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow urges his listeners and himself to "act" (line 11):

   Let us, then, be up and doing, 
   With a heart for any fate; 
   Still achieving, still pursuing, 
   Learn to labor and to wait. (33-36; Longfellow, Voices 1: 22) 

A certain amount of the critical aversion to "A Psalm of Life" over the past century and a half since its publication in 1838--and it is important to remember that "as late as 1929, according to a national poll of newspaper readers, America's favorite poem was still 'A Psalm of ...