Mister Rogers' Neighborhood constituted a large part of my childhood television-viewing regime, and I credit this song with bolstering my self esteem to its present level as well as instilling in me an affinity for avant-garde syntactical ambiguity in poetry and prose. Notice how he runs the second and third lines together--when sung, the "as proud as I am" descends in pitch and crescendos until the opening line is repeated again, with vigor. On the show it was always sung with piano accompaniment--chunky chords played proudly and majestically.
One of the reasons why the songs on his show were so catchy is that Fred Rogers actually graduated from Rollins College with a degree in Music Composition.
I'm Proud Of You
by Fred M. Rogers
I'm proud of you, I'm proud of you.
I hope that you're as proud as
I am proud of you,
I'm proud of you.
I hope that you are proud,
And that you're
Learning how important you are;
How important each person you see can be.
Discovering each one's specialty
Is the most important learning.
I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you.
I hope that you're as proud as I am
Proud of you,
I'm proud of you.
I hope that you are proud of you, too!