Life Is Real, Life Is Earnest

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Life is real, life is earnest

Author: Henry W. Longfellow
Tune: WILMOT (Weber)
Published in 11 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal;
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”
Was not spoken of the soul.

2 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

3 Lives of good men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

4 Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
Some forlorn and ship-wrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

5 Let us then be up and doing,
Nor our onward course abate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Source: Sunday School Voices: a collection of sacred songs #190

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Author: Henry W. Longfellow

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth , D.C.L. was born at Portland, Maine, Feb. 27, 1807, and graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825. After residing in Europe for four years to qualify for the Chair of Modern Languages in that College, he entered upon the duties of the same. In 1835 he removed to Harvard, on his election as Professor of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres. He retained that Professorship to 1854. His literary reputation is great, and his writings are numerous and well known. His poems, many of which are as household words in all English-speaking countries, display much learning and great poetic power. A few of these poems and portions of others have come into common use as hymns, but a hymn-writer in the strict sense of that term he… Go to person page >

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