Ambition (Barbara Rosen)

Music files

L E G E N D

Disclaimer

How to download

ICON	SOURCE
	Pdf
	Midi
	MusicXML
	Noteworthy
	File details
	Help

• (Posted 2024-01-04)  CPDL #78593:         

Editor: John Hetland (submitted 2024-01-04).   Score information: Letter, 3 pages, 297 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Ambition
Composer: Barbara Rosen
Lyricist: Barbara Rosen
Number of voices: 2vv   Voicing: SA
Genre: Secular, Art song

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 2001?
Description: 

Original text and translations

English text

When the mailman brings
the mail on through,
in gloom and rain and snow
behaving like a pro.

Nobody looks up to him
or thinks that he's a hero;
he's just an ordinary Jim,
his glamour index zero.

And policemen spend their professional time
on the beat, on the street, preventing crime.
They're expected to be above suspicion,
corageous, calm, without ambition,

except, perhaps, to die in saving
us nice folks from those who are misbehaving.
But until they do we rarely see
Their heroic accountability.

When a Catholic goes to see a priest
inside that dark confessional,
he doesn't worry in the least,
for he knows the man's professional.

He doesn't fear he'll rue the day
he let his secret out,
because, whatever he may say,
he never has a doubt
that however he may be
the priest will have integrity.

Most of us live unremarkable lives,
just trying to make good as husbands and wives,
not being heroes for there are few chances
these days to don armor and ride out with lances.

The thing about pros that's dif'rent from us
is that they're always there without making a fuss
about whose turn it is to do a hard task:
they simply step in without waiting to ask.

For a pro is accountable down to the ground
no bucks will get passes when a pro is around.
For a pro is a person who knows what to do
and does it.

And well, I don't know about you,
But I have an ambition to be a pro too.
For I've lived long enough now to say I can see
that the "some one" who "ought to do some-thing" is me.