Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, May 23, 2004.

This week, we have been featuring poems that in one way or another are appropriate to the season of graduation and the end of the school year.

But the tone of many of those poems has been heavy or complicated.

Today's poem hopefully will remedy that or at least balance it. This is a poem by Christina

Rosetti that is often read around this time of year, often read to graduates or given to graduates as a kind

of encouragement about what they can look forward to. It's called uphill, and it's a little

brighter in its ultimate conclusions.

Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting place, a roof for when the

slow dark hours begin? May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that in.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before?

Then must I knock or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at the door.

Shall I find comfort, travel sore and weak?

Of labor you shall find the sun.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

So there's this call and response in the poem that utters the voice of uncertainty of one stepping

out onto the road for a long journey.

I think of Bilbo's walking song from the Lord of the Rings.

You step out onto the road.

There's no knowing where you might be swept off to roads lead

ever on and on. And young people who are graduating and feel like they're stepping into a world that

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