My favourite quatrain from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life, one of the first poems I learnt to recite by heart.

I empathise with the yearning to leave something of note behind when my days are done; to say, “I was here. That was me.”

Despite the poem’s vaporous religious undertones (more a sign of the time than anything else, methinks), it speaks truth to all of us.

A Psalm of Life

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.