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.