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Comparing A Psalm Of Life And The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls

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Most people have different philosophies of life and death and what is left afterwards. Longfellow, writer of “ A Psalm of Life” and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls,” has two different opinions about life and what happens after one is gone. He writes that there is meaning left by one after you are gone, but then he contradicts himself by saying that once you are gone that all of your work and history are gone. In “ A Psalm of life,” Longfellow describes life as earnest,that life is full and worth living. He says that “the grave is not the goal… But to act that each tomorrow Find us farther than today.” While he states this, he is saying that people should not live to look forward to death, that people should value their life, and that they should live it to the fullest. Longfellow states that “Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime,” meaning that no matter what we do, we always have people to look up to in hard times, and while we get through our hard times, he say “leave behind us Footprints on the sand on time… that perhaps another… Seeing, shall take heart again.” meaning that the “footprints” or actions that we do will be left behind to inspire someone else to do great things and lead them to do more with their life. …show more content…

Efface the footprints in the sand,” is what is stated by Longfellow, and in this he is comparing the waves to the life and nature of others. That no matter the history you leave behind, there is so much other stuff constantly happening, such as how constantly “the tide rises” and “The tide falls,” life is constantly changing, so there is always things wiping away little things that people work on, making the history you leave behind pointless and nothing important to other

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