According to the poet,what should our attitude be to the past to the future?

In this poem, Longfellow promotes the attitude that "the soul is dead that slumbers" and that we must not see life as a "funeral march" toward the grave, but as something "real" and "earnest," an opportunity for our souls to grow. As such, the poet recommends that we "let the dead Past bury its dead" and "act in the living Present." We should not dwell on what has passed, but strive to "make our lives sublime," making a mark that will endure after us and even inspire others to strive similarly to better themselves. We should "trust no future, howe'er pleasant," which does not help us ensure that "each to-morrow" will "find us farther than to-day."
Longfellow's attitude in this poem is that we should never simply plod on like "cattle" in mindless expectation that the future will be whatever it will be. On the contrary, he suggests we put the past behind us and embrace the future, with the ideology that we can always be "achieving" and "pursuing" throughout life, such that we make "footprints" of our own on our futures.