April showers bring May flowers... and May diplomas! In honor of those graduating from high school/college/obedience school (dogs), here are a few poems I found online to help mark the occasion. Feel free to share these words with your family, friends, and even your canine companions.

Life, Charlotte Bronte

 Life, believe, is not a dream So dark as sages say; Oft a little morning rain Foretells a pleasant day. Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, But these are transient all; If the shower will make the roses bloom, O why lament its fall? Rapidly, merrily, Life’s sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly! What though Death at times steps in, And calls our Best away? What though sorrow seems to win, O’er hope, a heavy sway? Yet Hope again elastic springs, Unconquered, though she fell; Still buoyant are her golden wings, Still strong to bear us well. Manfully, fearlessly, The day of trial bear, For gloriously, victoriously, Can courage quell despair!

The Road Not Taken, 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 having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

The Graduate Leaving College, George Moses Heaton

 What summons do I hear?

The morning peal, departure’s knell; My eyes let fall a friendly tear, And bid this place farewell. Attending servants come, The carriage wheels like thunders roar, To bear the pensive seniors home, Here to be seen no more. Pass one more transient night, The morning sweeps the college clean; The graduate takes his last long flight, No more in college seen. The bee, which courts the flower, Must with some pain itself employ, And then fly, at the day’s last hour, Home to its hive with joy. 

Andrea Gutierrez is the editor of the Bryan County News.