Essay on Fairness and Justice in the poems.

Being fair and just means that you give back equally, with tolerance and no favoritism. Taking the first poem, The Psalm of Life, we can start to relate this values with it. Fairness and justice don't have a totally visible role into conveying the message that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seemed to want to transmit, but in the first stanza, its is implied that the speaker doesn’t want to know that life is not what it seems, therefore he doesn't want to know life is unfair and treats each one of us differently because we are not in charge of it. The poem slightly implies that despite life’s unfair characteristics, we must strive to keep living it to its maximum, achieving our goals and reach our destiny. Although not concrete, a careful reader might imply the intention behind the text’s surface.

In “The tide rises, The tide falls” these values are more present and easier to identify. In its explanation of the constant circle that is life, we are presented with the fact that things do not change around us, that despite everything, the tide still rises and falls, whatever we do. Here we can see usage of fairness. Life doesn't discriminate, it’s cycle still goes on whatever we do or whoever we are. Justice isn't really present in the poem, only if it is used as a variation of fairness, but otherwise, it is not discussed in the poem and doesn’t interest the texts if taken as its own concept.

Both of this poems try to explain life’s certain way of working and how our behavior affects or doesn’t affect it. 

From all of this we can conclude that the values fairness and justice are not the main points of discussion in the texts, but can be observed in slight implications by the author, and can not be deducted easily without analyzing them. They are never explicitly mentioned but still take part into developing the message of the poems, even in the slightest way. In “The Psalm of life” fairness is shown more as not wanting something to be unfair, and do something about it instead of just watching it pass everyday, and in “The tide rises, The tide falls” it is shown that life is always fair, even if its not to our liking, and that it doesn’t favor anyone since it its a cycle, meaning always the same.