“The ancestor who in the past sweated as he tilled infertile fields, the elementary school teacher who toiled away in teaching her students and that friend who helped relieve our burden,” he said, according to the translation printed in the program, “all of these, although they may be forgotten, nevertheless are a vital part of us today and will be for as long as we live.”

In the Senior English Address entitled “Respecting the Future,” Eric B. Hart ’03 asked for dignity in public discourse and debate, while poking fun at the loquaciousness of Harvard students.

“If we cannot conserve oxygen,” Hart said, “we should at least preserve civility.”

Elizabeth L.D. Carpenter, a student from the Business School, delivered the Graduate English Address. Her speech, entitled “Auden and the Little Things,” was based on W.H. Auden’s poem “Sept. 1, 1939.”

According to Carpenter, Auden eventually found fault in one of the poem’s most famous lines—“We must love one another or die”—and abandoned it.

But Carpenter said the message still applies, “and not even its author can take that away.”

After the speeches and conferral of degrees, the high sheriff closed the ceremony by pounding his staff three times. This time, he held the knob securely in place.

This year’s commencement featured several new security measures, including a requirement that all the graduates wear lanyards around their necks containing their identification cards.

Despite the lanyard requirement—and fears of terrorist attacks reignited two weeks ago after an explosion at Yale Law School, which the FBI is still investigating—security for the occasion seemed slightly looser than last year’s.

While security guards and Harvard University Police Department officers carried metal-detector wands to screen visitors, their scans were few and far between, and lines of people moved through gates into the Yard at a relatively quick pace.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.