Longfellow first published his poem "A Psalm of Life" in 1836 in the literary magazine The Knickerbocker. As you might guess from the name of the publication, that magazine was based in New York and focused on the Yankees. A much larger audience was reached two years later, when the poem was included in the very first major published collection of Longfellow's poems, Voices in the Night. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Second Great Awakening was just beginning to draw to a close, and so highly religious content found a naturally receptive audience across the country. Even those who were not undergoing any particular spiritual awakening could find inspiration in the message that glorified the positive aspects of religious faith in the afterlife while rejecting the depressive laments of a more apocalyptic interpretation of biblical faith. The young man is the speaker of the poem, who is attacking the Psalmist for writing sad poems that convey to readers the message that life is simply a ghost and an illusory lie. The Young Man turns to biblical scriptures about Adam returning to dust to prove his point that the soul is immortal and therefore life is far from meaningless. "Don't tell me, in painful numbers life is but an empty dream!" they are the opening lines of the poem and lay the foundations for the thematic thrust of the narrative: the Young Man challenges the very foundational foundations of the Psalmist's work. The poetry written by the Psalmist is pessimistic, depressing, morbid and dangerous. Dangerous because it instills in the reader the belief that life has no meaning; nothing more than a dream without meaning or purpose. The Psalmist is the only other character in the game, but his specific identity is never made clear. Some have suggested that the Psalmist may actually be Longfellow himself; a symbolic representative of himself during the most depressed and morbid periods of existence. Another theory is that the Psalmist is a more universal figure expressing the morbid verses of more contemporary figures such as Poe or Lord Byron, in which case the lines "leave behind us/Footprints on the stand" become the central metaphor of the poem as urges readers to overcome pain and create meaning in their lives by working hard to achieve individual results that will in turn inspire others who follow them. The Young Man's anger against the Psalmist is not really directed against any specific writer, including the actual author of the psalms of the Bible as much as it is directed against those who took the writer of those psalms at his word that life is nothing but a meaningless dream. The real target of the poem is the lifelong sleepwalking emotional zombies who choose to let life happen to them instead of choosing to take the action necessary to become the heroes of their own narrative. Challenging the assumptions outlined by the Psalmist that life is nothing apart from the unfulfilled dream of an entity with a dead soul, Longfellow is pushing hard against those who blindly accept that life is a needlessly inexorable push towards the worms of the grave . The poem really rails against spiritual zombies by forcefully suggesting that the key to finding meaning in life is – in an almost Zen-like observation – responding to the reality of each moment as an individual and not as a passive lemming. By working hard to become the hero of the narrative, one can achieve a personal greatness that has the power to inspire. In this way, one leaves the zombie horde behind and achieves the immortality that contradicts.