When my Mom was a girl, she would wash the dishes while her father dried them. Together they would recite poetry, some of which is still with her after more than 70 years, including these two stanzas from Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life:
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.