In the first two stanzas of “A Psalm of Life,” the speaker takes issue with the traditional notion, expressed in certain sections of the Old Testament, that life, as we experience it, is something of a dream and is ultimately futile: of dust we were formed, and to dust we shall return when we die.

For the speaker, such a notion couldn't be further from the truth. He argues quite forcefully that life is most certainly not a dream, as the psalmist would have it, but every bit as real as we might think it is. Far from being an empty dream, life is something to be lived and enjoyed to the full. The goal of life is not the grave. Of course, our bodies will eventually decay and turn to dust, but not our souls. They will live on.

Human life, which is animated by the soul, is not the exercise of utter futility that the psalmist would have us believe it is. Life is there to be lived and enjoyed, not treated with contempt as nothing more than a sad, drawn-out prelude to death and decay.

It's notable that the speaker of the poem is a young man, who clearly has his whole life ahead of him. Little wonder, then, that he has no time for the psalmist's gloom and doom. He's in the full bloom of youth, and intends to make the most of what life has to offer, irrespective of certain excerpts from the Old Testament.