Funeral reading
A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a poem read at a funeral or memorial service. It takes about a minute and a half read aloud, usually by a guest reader. It is in the public domain, so the full text is printed on this page and goes straight into a ceremony script.
The full text
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. Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
Public domain, so these words can be printed in a ceremony script or an order of service.
Where it comes from
Longfellow wrote A Psalm of Life not long after the death of his first wife; it was first published anonymously in The Knickerbocker in September 1838 and collected in Voices of the Night in 1839.
What it says
The speaker refuses to hear life called an empty dream. Life is real and earnest, and the grave is not where it ends; “dust thou art” was said of the body, not the soul. The lives of great people show that ours can leave footprints on the sands of time, and those footprints might give heart to some shipwrecked stranger who comes after. So the poem ends with a call to the living: get up, get on with it, keep working and keep hoping, and learn to labor and to wait.
Aimed at the living rather than the dead. Ends on getting back to work. Read at a funeral or memorial service. Themes: footprints on the sands of time · life is real, life is earnest · a life of work · encouraging the living · traditional.
Who it suits
Someone whose life was work and duty: a farmer, a builder, a nurse, a person who never stopped. It suits a family who want the service to send people back out into their lives, and an older congregation who may remember the poem from school. It works at religious and secular services. It is less fitting where the family want quiet grief, since its energy is brisk and forward.
Where it goes in the ceremony
Toward the end of the service, after the eulogy, as the turn from mourning to carrying on. A grandchild, a colleague or someone the person mentored reads it well.
Reading it aloud
The text on this page is 117 words. At a ceremony pace of about 130 words a minute, which is slower than conversation, that comes to about 55 seconds of reading.
- The meter bounces. Resist the singsong by slowing the first line of each stanza and reading to the commas.
- “Mournful numbers” means sad verses. The line is a rebuke to gloomy poetry, so give it a little spirit.
- The footprints stanza is the heart. Slow down for it and look up at “sands of time”.
- End firmly on “Learn to labor and to wait.” It is a send-off, not a sigh.
Questions about reading it aloud
How long does “A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas” take to read aloud?
“A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas” takes about a minute and a half read aloud at a ceremony pace, which is slower than conversation — roughly 130 words a minute. That is the figure the run-sheet uses when it works out the timing for the whole service.
Who usually reads “A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas”?
Usually a guest reader rather than the officiant. “A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas” runs about a minute and a half, which is a manageable amount to hand to a friend or family member. Give them a printed copy of their own, in a size they can read without their glasses, and tell them where to stand and how you will introduce them.
Can “A Psalm of Life — selected stanzas” be printed in a ceremony script?
Yes. It is in the public domain, so the full text is on this page and can be printed in a script or an order of service.
Where this text was checked
Checked word for word against a full-text edition that is itself the authority — a Project Gutenberg or Wikisource transcription, a publisher’s own edition, or the issuing body’s page.
Checked
A reading is two minutes of the hour.
The rest is the welcome, the life, the remembrances, the committal — and knowing what comes next. Answer some questions about them and get the whole service, written out, with this reading in its place.
Other readings that suit the same service
- Ecclesiastes 3:1–8a minute and a halfA season for everything, for the same kind of working life
- The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The One-Hoss Shay — selected stanzas3 minutesAnother nineteenth-century New England poem, for a long life well built
- 2 Timothy 4:6–835 secondsI have finished the course, said of a life of effort
- Crossing the Bar55 secondsAlfred, Lord Tennyson
- Remember55 secondsChristina Rossetti
- Requiem30 secondsRobert Louis Stevenson