Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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“A Psalm of Life”

Longfellow - A Psalm of Life.jpg
PDF (2 pages)


“Sri Aurobindo: If you want poetry to be appreciated by all, why stop with the masses? Why not the hill-tribes arid children too?
         If you speak of popular poets, Martin Tupper was a very popular poet at one time but nobody remembers him now. So with every popular poet. Longfellow, for instance: his poem with the line, “Life is real, life is earnest” was in everybody's mouth and in every schoolbook. Everyone understood him and got the Rasa.

Nirodbaran: It has been translated into Bengali.

Yes? By Hem Banerji?

I don't know by whom.
Satyendra: We had to commit it to memory.

But now? Nobody reads Longfellow. He is quite forgotten.

Purani: The Socialists themselves object to Longfellow's line: “Learn to labour and to wait.” They won't wait.

No, it should rather be: “Learn to labour and be dictated to.”

That should be Stalin's motto, but he himself doesn't labour.

Oh no, he labours tremendously but to dictate. So in Stalin's case the line should be: “Learn to labour and to dictate.” (Laughter)[1]




  1. Talks with Sri Aurobindo, p.365, 17 January 1940


See also