Poetry Painting Project: Day 28

ABOUT THE POETRY PAINTING PROJECT

We selected 30 poems (from the public domain) and each day for the next 30 days I will write a poem inspired by it, and Addie will paint a painting.

So, without further ado, let’s get to today’s painting and poem, inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, A Psalm of Life.

To read this poem, click here (or scroll down near the bottom of the page)


ADDIE’S PAINTING

Let Us, Then Be Up And Doing With A Heart For Any Fate
By Addie Hirshten

MY POEM

I AM HERE

I am here.
Why not stay?
The rutted road
oft blindly traveled
wends the other way.

That road’s unraveled,
its monuments moldered,
sleepwalkers dream wakeless
the distance unfolded.

I am here
Why not stay?
I’ll cherish my measure
of sunstruck days—
each hour a treasure—

each moment a shrine.


OUR INSPIRATION

A PSALM OF LIFE
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.)

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.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
   Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
   And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
   Funeral marches to the grave.

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.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
   With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
   Learn to labor and to wait.


Notes:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882. Born in Portland, Maine (then Massachusetts)
Link to Biography: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/henry-wadsworth-longfellow
Link to Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44644/a-psalm-of-life


ABOUT THE POETRY PAINTING PROJECT

For the past couple of months I have been working on a huge new secret project with my painter, Addie Hirshten, of Studio Alchemy

We selected 30 poems (from the public domain) and each day for the next 30 days I will write a poem inspired by it, and Addie will paint a painting.

Expect an outpouring of creative energy! This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say.  Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. I feel so inspired by the poetry we are working with AND seeing Addie’s process as well. Expect daily surprises with our posts. Expect passion. Expect love. Expect life.

Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/

Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/

Without the playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Carl Jung

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