Welcome back to a special Saturday episode of The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Saturday, May 25th, 2024. And today we have Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's

complete Mortituri Salutamos, poem for the 50th anniversary of the class of 1825 in Bowden College.

It begins with an epigraph from the Roman poet Ovid.

Temporalabuntur takitis quees an Eskimosanis,

or fugiun frame no non-remeran dees.

Or time slips away.

We grow old through quiet years, and the days flee unrestrained by rains or bridal.

Here is Morrituri salutamus.

O Caesar, we who are about to die, salute you,

with the gladiators cry in the arena,

standing face to face with death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes, ye groves of pine,

that once were mine and are no longer mine,

Thou river, widening through the meadows green, to the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,

Ye halls in whose seclusion and repose, phantoms of fame, like exhalations rose and vanished.

We who are about to die salute you.

Earth and air and sea and sky.

And the imperial sun that scatters down his sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

You do not answer us.

You do not hear.

We are forgotten.

...