Patti Smith stood onstage at the Met Philly on Saturday during her 50th anniversary tour for her 1975 album Horses. She recalled her elementary school report cards when she was growing up in Germantown in the 1950s.

“They would always say ‘Patti Lee shows a lot of potential, but she daydreams too much,’” she said. “‘Will she amount to anything?’”

The revered punk poet and undiminished life force, who will turn 79 on Dec. 30, smiled and looked out at the cheering sold-out crowd, mirroring their affection.

“You are my answer,” she said.

Philadelphia was the final stop on the Horses tour, commemorating the majestic John Cale-produced album with an iconic cover photo by Robert Mapplethorpe that lit the fuse for a punk rock conflagration to come.

Smith came onstage dressed in black jeans and a suit jacket, accompanied by her band, with original 1970s members Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Dougherty on guitar and drums, joined by her son Jackson Smith on guitar, and Tony Shanahan on bass and keyboard.

They started with “Gloria,” Smith’s reworked version of the 1962 Van Morrison-penned Them hit that began, as always, with the still startling declaration “Jesus died for somebody’s sins … but not mine.” She then went on to take responsibility for her own actions, seeking rock and roll salvation on her own terms.

“My sins, my own,” she sang in a voice that has lowered in register in the last half century, but lost none of its power. She often sounded as if she were channeling otherworldly spirits.

“They belong to me,” she sang.

The band steadily built to a roar, with Kaye and Shanahan chiming in along with the crowd on chanted vocals.

Track One, Side One. “G-L-O-R-I-A!” catharsis was already achieved.

The eight-song Horses was performed in its entirety, essentially straight through but with a few songs flip-flopped in order. “Free Money,” about dreaming of hitting the lottery and lifting her family up financially, preceded the epic improvised-in-the-studio “Birdland.” For that song, Smith put on glasses to read out the rapid-fire incantatory lyrics from one of her own books, as the song built to a crescendo.

» READ MORE: ‘The places that helped form me were Philadelphia and rural South Jersey’: Patti Smith talks about her childhood

There was little chitchat during Horses itself, save for a dedication of “Elegie” to Jimi Hendrix and a story about hanging out in the 1970s with the late Television guitarist Tom Verlaine at a Manhattan magazine shop called Flying Saucer News. The duo teamed to write “Break It Up,” a song inspired by Smith’s dream of coming upon a marble statue of Jim Morrison, “like Prometheus in chains, with long flowing hair” lying in a clearing in the woods.

Horses built to a climax with “Land,” complete with its ecstatic “Do the Watusi” romp through Chris Kenner’s “Land of 1000 Dances” and a reprise of “Gloria.” Then, Smith took a break.

While offstage, the band served up a treat: A three-song tribute to Television, the Smith group’s “sister band” with whom it shared a four-nights-a-week residency at CBGB in New York in 1975. Kaye and Shanahan took turns on vocals on “See No Evil,” “Friction,” and “Marquee Moon,” and Kaye and Jackson Smith (who shone throughout the evening) paid aural homage to Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s guitar interplay.

The second half of the two-hour-plus show surveyed Smith’s five decade post-Horses career, with ‘70s rock radio hits like “Dancing Barefoot” and her Bruce Springsteen cowrite “Because the Night.” That was dedicated to her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith and included an exultant, crowd pleasing declaration that she was back on stage in the city that shaped her “because the night belongs to Philadelphia.”

“Ain’t It Strange” and “Pissing in the River,” two songs from 1976’s Horses follow-up Radio Ethiopia were included, both holding up well in stately versions. The latter included an origin story about Smith walking to school with her sisters and being afraid of high winds blowing them into Wissahickon Creek.

Smith explained that “Peaceable Kingdom” — a song that shares a title with a painting by Quaker artist Edward Hicks at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts — was written “for the Palestinian people” with Shanahan “with great hope” in 2003.

“Now,” she said, “we sing it with great sorrow.”

A slowed, and somber, segment of “People Have The Power,” her populist anthem penned with her late husband was added onto the end of the prayerlike song.

For an encore, Smith brought out her daughter Jesse Paris Smith — who will join the singer and author, Jackson Smith, and Shanahan at Marian Anderson Hall on Monday for a “Songs & Stories” performance that kicks off a book tour for her new memoir Bread of Angels.

Together with Kaye, Smith sang “Ghost Dance,” a song from 1978’s Easter that she said the two wrote “with great respect and love for the Hopi tribe.” She urged that “we need to be diligent” in resisting “our present administration who show no empathy, respect or love for our Native Americans.”

That was followed by the full-on rocked-out “People Have The Power,” for which the band was joined by New Jersey guitarist, and longtime Smith associate James Mastro.

But before leaping into her testament of faith in democratic ideals that name checked the Declaration of Independence and Independence Hall, Smith had a few more words for the city where “I discovered art, and battled bullies.”

“I’m just so happy to be in Philadelphia,” she said. “In 1967, I had to leave Philadelphia to look for a job. I got on the Greyhound bus and went to New York City. I was 20 years old and I built a new life … but it all began with that decision to get on that bus. And I might have left Philadelphia physically, but it’s always been in my heart.”

“People Have The Power” was reliably inspiring, stirring the heart with marching music fit for taking to the streets. But Smith took the extra step of adding a closer that she often covered in her mid-1970s Horses era: The Who’s “My Generation.”

“Hope I die before I get old,” she sang, gleefully echoing Pete Townshend’s 1960’s youth culture mantra. But then, she added her own in-song commentary that playfully raised the possibility of future Horses anniversary tours just as thrilling as this one.

“And I am old!” Smith shouted. “And I’m going to get older! I’m going to live to a hundred and two!”

Songs & Stories with Patti Smith: Bread of Angels Book Tour at Marian Anderson Hall, 300 S. Broad St. at 7 p.m. Monday. ensembleartsphilly.org.