Song of the Day - 24th October

Today's Song of the Day revolves around the theme of Graduation. 

It is a simple setting of a poignant poem called The Graduate Leaving College by George Moses Horton. This would make a stunning choice for your university choir to perform on Graduation Day! Imagine the joy of starting a cherished tradition of singing it every year.

Horton was an extraordinary man. Born into the harsh realities of slavery in North Carolina, he broke barriers as the first African American author to be published in the United States. Around 1817, at the tender age of about 19, Horton undertook the daunting 10-mile journey north to Chapel Hill to sell fruits and farm products for his master. During this time, Horton channelled his deep emotions into crafting love poems for the University of North Carolina students, selling them for 25 cents or more. Remarkably, he had not yet learned to write, instead composing them in his mind and reciting them to the students. He achieved his first publication in 1828, unsuccessfully striving to earn enough to buy his freedom through his poetry.

Finally, in 1865, Horton became a free man at around 67 years old (his exact date of birth remains uncertain but is believed to be around 1798). He had already penned and published two books of poetry while still enslaved, and a third collection was released in the very year he was emancipated, featuring 132 poems written between 1820 and 1865.

The details surrounding the date and circumstances of his death remain a mystery, but it is thought to have occurred after 1883.

In 2006, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill honoured George Moses Horton by naming a dormitory after him; it is believed to be the first university dormitory in the nation named for a former slave.

Get the music for this song for free - find out how here.

The Graduate Leaving College

By George Moses Horton

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.