We Are Upward Bound

Music: Clarinet Concerto in A: Adagio.
By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Performed by Jason Weinberger and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra
at the Free Music Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

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We are upward bound, the world's bright future,
The generation that will not betray
Its noblest dreams, the things that we've been taught here,
The ways of peace and brotherhood and love.

So as we make this final farewell gesture
And take our leave on graduation day,
Let us thank the teachers that we've found here,
Who must each day be what they hope to prove.

What a gift you've given us -- yourselves!
The best in you, that you might be a sign
To us of what the best in us can be:
Loving, smart, hardworking, fair, and kind.

Your temperament's the well-wrought text that tells
Us more than any lesson you assign.
We become the people that we see
And treasure long the good we leave behind.

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.



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