Longfellow Memory

We had a semblance of continuity in those precious early years:

monthly memory poems, 

verses, and the annual 

 Speech Meet.  

This wee verse entered the scene from a Celestial Seasons tea package (you take what you can get when your education dollars come NOT from the Fed, but from what your bacon-bringing hubby can cobble together each year, once taxes and mismanagement take their toll).

And the following verse sticks in our collective heads, called forth on strange and not-so-strange occasions, and always to my great delight.

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. 

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. 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

  Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

  Find us farther than to-day. 

[did not learn next three verses] 

Lives of great men all remind us

  We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

  Footprints on the sands of time;

[we did not learn the verse that belongs

here, either; tea boxes have not much 

room, after all. 

But this is the one I always chime in with,

complete with my penchant for the over-

dramatic:] 

Let us, then, be up and doing,

  With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

  Learn to labor and to wait!