Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, May 24, 2024.

This marks the end of a week where we have been featuring poems about graduation,

the end of the academic year, or poems that are merely conversant with the spirit of those

occasions.

This seemed like a fitting poem with which to end the week.

It's by Henry Wasworth Longfellow, and it's called Morituri Salutamus,

poem for the 50th anniversary of the class of 1825 in Bowdoin College.

So a speech in verse form addressed to the 50th anniversary of one's graduation.

The full poem is rather lengthy.

It's lovely and diverse in its topics.

Longfellow addresses comments to former teachers

living and dead, the young men and women who have taken his place as students, and

finally to his own former classmates living and dead. It is that last group that we'll be hearing about today in the

selections that I've chosen. But if you like what you hear today and want to hear more,

tomorrow we will be running a special bonus Saturday daily poem with a recording of the full poem. No commentary, just the poem

read in full, but if you're curious about it or would like to hear it for some reason that

doesn't involve curiosity, come back tomorrow and we'll have that for you.

In today's selections, Longfellow also references the great Italian poet, Dante.

Longfellow being the great 19th century translator of the Divine Comedy.

There's a theme in these poems after all.

I will say a few things about the poem and then read the selections just one time. In it, he takes up themes from

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