A Psalm of Life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807 to 1882
Drag the words to the correct places to complete the poem. To reset the game, click on the "Reset Game" button located below the poem. This will clear all the words you've placed in the blanks, returning them to the word bank and resetting the poem to its original state with empty blanks.
What the heart of the young man said to ______ Psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is ______ 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 ______ the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our ______ end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
______ us farther than today.
Art is long, and Time ______ fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, ______ muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
______ the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac ______ Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a ______ in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let ______ dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the ______ Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great ______ all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;—
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a ______ for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to ______ and to wait.