Explore Poems: Graduation

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A Blessing
By Luci Tapahonso
This morning we gather in gratitude for all aspects of sacredness:
the air, the warmth of fire, bodies of water, plants, the land,
and all animals and humankind.
We gather to honor our students who have achieved the extraordinary
accomplishment of earning doctoral or...
Graduation Day
By Matthew Zapruder
Drawn by ceremonial obligation
up from sleep I woke and stepped
into the borrowed black robes
all ghost bureaucrats trained
to redirect dreaming pretend
we do not like to wear. I drove
my black car to the stadium
to sit on stage and be watched
watching young expectant...
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And...
If—
By Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be...
Che Fece ... Il Gran Rifiuto
By C. P. Cavafy
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses...
Pastime with Good Company
By Henry VIII, King of England
Pastime with good company
I love and shall unto I die.
Grudge whoso will, but none deny,
So God be pleased, this live will I.
For my pastance
Hunt, sing, and dance.
My heart is set
All godely sport
To...
The School Where I Studied
By Yehuda Amichai
Translated By Chana Bloch
I passed by the school where I studied as a boy
and said in my heart: here I learned certain things
and didn't learn others. All my life I have loved in vain
the things I didn't learn. I am filled with knowledge,
I...
Up-Hill
By Christina Rossetti
Does the road wind up-hill 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...
It Couldn’t Be Done
By Edgar Albert Guest
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
      But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
      Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
      On his face. If he...
"You who want ..."
By Hadewijch II
Translated By Jane Hirshfield
You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within.

There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting.
Live Blindly and upon the Hour
By Trumbull Stickney
Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,
Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred.
Around thine earth sun-wingèd winds do blow
And...
On Distinction
By A. F. Moritz
We won’t pretend we’re not hungry for distinction
but what can ever distinguish us enough?
This country, this language won’t last long, the race
will die, later the cockroach, earth itself,

and last this beer bottle: silicon fused by man,
almost indestructible, like a soul:
it...
Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was 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...
An Emeritus Addresses the School
By John Ciardi
No one can wish nothing.
Even that death wish sophomores
are nouveau-glib about
reaches for a change of notice.

“I’ll have you know,” it will say
thirty years later to its son,
“I was once widely recognized
for the quality of my death wish.”

That was before three...
Odes
By Fernando Pessoa
Translated By Edouard Roditi
1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
         That on the day they are born,
         That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They're born when the sun is already high
         And...
For a Girl I Know about to Be a Woman
By Miller Williams
Because you’ll find how hard it can be
to tell which part of your body sings,
you never should dally with any young man
who does any one of the following things:

tries to beat all the yellow lights;
says, “Big deal!”...
Solitude
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a...
Worldly Place
By Matthew Arnold
Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken
Who...
To a Young Writer
By Yvor Winters
Here for a few short years
Strengthen affections; meet,
Later, the dull arrears
Of age, and be discreet.

The angry blood burns low.
Some friend of lesser mind
Discerns you not; but so
Your solitude’s defined.

Write little; do it well.
Your knowledge will be such,
At last, as to...
What I Know about Epistemology
By John Surowiecki
As the light goes, go.
Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from
convention's good graces: learn, or someone
will have you filing files or writing writs,
demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge

door to door; someone might even...

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