I am a teacher trying to find a poem appropriate for my sixth graders to do as a "choral reading" at their graduation from elementary school.

Any ideas?

There is a poem about knowledge and power, but I cannot find it anywhere.

This one seemed pretty good:

En route to understanding we will meet,
many an opinion foisted as fact;
a wall of dogma, lined a dead-end street,
our labyrinth minds' trace of vaster tract:
To see the obvious as the sights unseen,
to say the somethings as not said before,
hit gravity head-on, an apple?s glean,
like Newton found the novel we ignore.
Is that not what we were created for?
Our journey?s discovery of who we are;
of learning all that?s led us from our lore;
of making us instruments to mend our mar?
Knowledge is power we learn, mind?s design.
What the Powers can't seize will you consign?





© Helga Ross 2004

and I seem to recall this read at some such ceremony:

William Ernest Henley. 1849?1903

7. Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

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The knowledge and power theme may be to vague to chase it down easily. Perhaps a line or two can be recalled?