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.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life”
Photo of Longfellow on the Isle of Wight, England, taken in 1868 by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 