So shall a light that cannot fade / Beam on thee from on high, / And angel voices say to thee— “These things shall never die.”

 Things That Never Die,

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

The pure, the bright, the beautiful

that stirred our hearts in youth,

The impulses to wordless prayer,

The streams of love and truth,

The longing after something lost,

The spirit’s longing cry,

The striving after better hopes—

These things can never die.

The timid hand stretched forth to aid

A brother in his need;

A kindly word in grief’s dark hour

That proves a friend indeed;

The plea for mercy softly breathed,

When justice threatens high,

The sorrow of a contrite heart—

These things shall never die.

Let nothing pass, for every hand

Must find some work to do,

Lose not a chance to waken love—

Be firm and just and true.

So shall a light that cannot fade

Beam on thee from on high,

And angel voices say to thee—

“These things shall never die.”

"DICKENS showed himself to be an original man by always accepting old and established topics. There is no clearer sign of the absence of originality among modern poets than their disposition to find new themes. Really original poets write poems about the spring. They are always fresh, just as the spring is always fresh. Men wholly without originality write poems about torture, or new religions, of some perversion of obscenity, hoping that the mere sting of the subject may speak for them. But we do not sufficiently realise that what is true of the classic ode is also true of the classic joke. A true poet writes about the spring being beautiful because (after a thousand springs) the spring really is beautiful. In the same way the true humourist writes about a man sitting down on his hat, because the act of sitting down on one’s hat (however often and however admirably performed) really is extremely funny. We must not dismiss a new poet because his poem is called "To a Skylark"; nor must we dismiss a humourist because his new farce is called "My Mother-in-law." He may really have splendid and inspiring things to say upon an eternal problem. The whole question is whether he has."

G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to 'Sketches by Boz.'

"When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself. And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great. Now the error of Diogenes is evident. The error of Diogenes lay in the fact that he omitted to notice that every man is both an honest man and a dishonest man. Diogenes looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern, but he never thought of looking inside the thief. And that is where the Founder of Christianity found the honest man; He found him on a gibbet and promised him Paradise. Just as Christianity looked for the honest man inside the thief, democracy looked for the wise man inside the fool. It encouraged the fool to be wise. We can call this thing sometimes optimism, sometimes equality; the nearest name for it is encouragement. It had its exaggerations ─ failure to understand original sin, notions that education would make all men good, the childlike yet pedantic philosophies of human perfectibility. But the whole was full of faith in the infinity of human souls, which is in itself not only Christian but orthodox; and this we have lost amid the limitations of pessimistic science. Christianity said that any man could be a saint if he chose; democracy, that every man could be a citizen if he chose. The note of the last few decades in art and ethics has been that a man is stamped with an irrevocable psychology and is cramped for perpetuity in the prison of his skull. It was a world that expects everything of everybody. It was a world that encouraged anybody to be anything. And in England and literature its living expression was Dickens."

G.K. Chesterton: "Charles Dickens," (1906) Part I, Chap. 1

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not: 

Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught; 

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

           Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear; 

If we were things born 

Not to shed a tear, 

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 

from To a Skylark,

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

https://youtu.be/lr4pME4ICqY

Skylark - Anita O’Day (Gene Krupa band) 1941

Johnny Mercer lyric/Hoagy Carmichael music

Skylark

Have you anything to say to me?

Won't you tell me where my love can be?

Is there a meadow in the mist

Where someone's waiting for a kiss?

Oh skylark

Have you seen a valley green with spring?

Where my heart can go a journeying

Over the shadows and the rain

To a blossom covered lane

And in your lonely flight

Haven't you heard the music of the night?

Wonderful music

Faint as a will o' the wisp

Crazy as a loon

Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon

Skylark

I don't know if you can find these things

But my heart is riding on your wings

So if you see them anywhere

Won't you lead me there

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise.

William Blake, “Eternity”