THE PSALM OF LIFE.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1752, 25 May 1886, Page 3

THE PSALM OF LIFE.

♦■■ The u Psalm of Life " was written one bright summer morning hastily upon the blank portions of a note of invitation, July, 1838. Being a revelation of his inmost heart he kept it some time before sending it away for public cation. It appeared, in. October, and afc once attracted attention. It was a new strain in American poetry. It has grown too familiar to read as it read at first. " But if the ideas have become commonplace, it has been well said that this poem has made them so. Those who remember its first appearance know what; wonderful freshness it had. It was copied far and wide. Thirty years later a distinguished man thanked hia college professor for reading that poem, and said he could never repay him for the good it did him. He grasped its spirit instantly and made it the inspiration of his life. Mr Sumner had a classmate who was Baved from suicide by reading it, and during the Franco-Prussian war a Frenchman whose son had been arrested by the German authorities and condemned to death was saved from insanity by translating it into French. The " Psalmist " was neither David nor Solomon, but simply the writer of the Psalm. "It was the young man's better heart, answering and refuting his own mood of despondency after the death of his wife. A fac-simile of the original draft shows several emendations and alterations. The second verse was entirely rewritten, but evidently the writer soon got into the spirit of it, for the last three verses are but little retouched.