American Minute - Feb. 27 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American Minute
with
Bill Federer

"Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch...One if by land, two if by sea..."

These lines are from the poem, Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born FEBRUARY 27, 1807.

An American poet and Harvard Professor, Longfellow wrote such American classics as: The Song of Hiawatha; The Courtship of Miles Standish and Evangeline, in which he penned:

"Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs."

In A Psalm of Life, 1838, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote:

"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...

In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,-act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!

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."