Here’s a little message
To all graduates tonight,
You are standing on the threshold
Of a new step in your life.
Soon you’ll cease to be boys and girls,
You’ll be women – you’ll be men
You’ll take the different walks of life,
Perhaps never meet again.
And in later years when you look back
At this Graduation Day,
It’ll sort of seem to you
Like the parting of the way.
Tonight the faces of your classmates
Are all fresh in your mind,
But as the years roll on
I’m sure that you will find
That life will take some here – some there
You’ll gradually drift apart,
And soon there’s just a memory
Of a face down in your heart.
Now my advice to you
Is remember that face well,
And in thirty years from now
It will give you quite a thrill
To be visiting someone
Or just walking along the street,
You’ll see a face that looks familiar
And then you’ll stop and speak.
You’ll say – I know you from somewhere
But just where – I do not know,
And soon you’ll discover you were schoolmates
About thirty years ago.
You’ll get your heads together
And you’ll talk of olden days,
And the schoolmates you remember
From the parting of the ways.
And you’ll say – you remember…….. ?
Oh, he’s a preacher now,
And you remember ……….?
He fell into wealth somehow.
And have you seen………lately?
Say didn’t he get fat?
He was such a skinny little thing
Who’d a thought he’d spread like that?
And do you remember……….. ?
With that wealth of curly hair?
Well you should see him now – he’s bald,
There’s not a hair up there.
And so you go on talking
About each and every one,
About the things that life has brought them
And the fine work they have done.
I don’t know a thing
That brings more joy to me today
Than just to meet an old schoolmate of mine
As I travel along life’s way.
Now as I close this little rhyme
I’d like to leave this thought with you,
We hope that life will treat you kind
And all your dreams come true.
But life is a game of give and take it,
A little bad comes with the good,
But life is a great deal what you make it,
Try and make it what you should.
