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As such, the poem is framed as a dramatic monologue spoken by the "Heart of a Young Man" to a "Psalmist." In the poem, the speaker declares that living in the present is more godly than the kind of austere and restrained life the Psalmist champions. In doing so, the poem captures the spirit of carpe diem, or "seize the day."
Quick answer: Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" uses various figures of speech, including personification, simile, metaphor, allusion, parallelism, and alliteration. Personification is...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
- 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. The speaker of ‘A Psalm of Life’ begins by asking something of his listener.
- 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. The narrator continues on with what reads as a desperate attempt to contradict what he was afraid of in the first stanza.
- Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow. Find us farther than to-day. The speaker continues his discussion of the purpose or point of life, He does not believe, nor will he even consider, the possibility that life is made to suffer through.
- Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating. Funeral marches to the grave.
Jun 16, 2023 · Sand is also utilized as a metaphor for the transient quality of human existence. In Psalm 90:5-6, the psalmist compares the brevity of human life to the passing away of sand. Just as sand slips through our fingers and quickly disappears, our time on earth is fleeting.
To understand metaphor in the Psalms requires that we look at it from four perspectives: as a rhetorical figure (metaphor in itself), metaphor and the reader (the obligations that metaphor imposes on a reader), metaphor and the poet (why poets speak metaphorically), and metaphor and reality (the ontological question of whether metaphor ...
- Pierre Van Hecke
The introduction provides a detailed, and well documented introduction to metaphor and theological imagination. Each subsequent chapter in the book examines a particular metaphor, tracing it through the psalms, noticing its theological purpose and interaction with other metaphors.
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What does the poem A Psalm of life say?
The metaphor captures the intensity of the psalmist’s yearning for communion with Yahweh, highlighting the idea that, just as water is essential for physical life, a close relationship with God is essential for the spiritual life of the believer.
