Student Question
What is the soul's main quality in "A Psalm of Life"?
Quick answer:
The soul's main qualities in "A Psalm of Life" are its immortality and its active, resilient nature. Longfellow emphasizes that the soul transcends physical reality, living on after death. Additionally, he portrays the soul as the inner personality and will, which must remain active and purposeful, striving for self-enrichment and inspiring others. The soul is described as capable of overcoming adversity, embodying a heroic persistence in life's challenges.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes two overarching characteristics of the human soul in "A Psalm of Life." He fervently declares that the soul is immortal and active.
Granted, Longfellow describes two different perspectives, or perhaps two different definitions, of the human soul. First, he references the part of humanity that transcends physical reality, the noncorporeal part of the human being. That part is the one that lives forever in the afterlife when the body has succumbed to the grave. Thus he declares that man is more than his physical body, of which scripture states, paraphrased by Longfellow, "Dust thou art, to dust returnest." The soul, being immortal, lives on.
The other "soul" that most of the poem deals with is the internal personality and will of the individual human. That soul, according to Longfellow, can be "dead" if it "slumbers." A real human soul must be actively pursuing "not enjoyment, and not sorrow," but a goal of self-enrichment that also benefits those around him and inspires those who will come after him. A soul must be active and purposeful, like a "hero" in battle. The primary quality of the human soul is that it is capable of "still achieving, still pursuing" despite obstacles. It overcomes and presses on in the face of adversity.
Longfellow describes the soul as immortal and actively resilient and purposeful.
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