"Tell Me Not, In Mournful Numbers, Life Is But An Empty Dream"
Context: Two of our most quotable poems are "A Psalm of Life" and Kipling's "If," both of which have been vastly popular. As late as 1929, when Longfellow's reputation was perhaps at its lowest, a poll showed "A Psalm of Life" to be, by all odds, America's favorite poem. Its point of view is that of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and Longfellow felt that the poem was so much a part of himself that he kept it "some time" in manuscript. It was a rallying cry against his own despondence, which he refuted in his verses. Almost every line is quotable, the first stanza being:
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!–
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
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