Sweepin' the Clouds Away

Don't go 'round moping, hoping happiness will come,
That's not the way; it doesn't pay!
If you want happiness, just help yourself to some,
Why don't you try to take life the way I do:

Let the whole world sigh or cry,
I'll be high in the sky,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

I don't care what's down below,
Let it rain, let it snow,
I'll be up on a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

I have learned life's lesson,
Fighters who always win,
Are those who can take it right on the chin and grin!

And so I'll shout to everyone,
Find your place, in the sun,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

Let the whole world sigh or cry,
I'll be high in the sky,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

I don't care what's down below,
Oh ho, let it rain, ah ha ha, let it snow,
I'll be up on a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

I have learned life's lesson,
Fighters who always win
Are those who can take it right on the chin and grin!

And so I'll shout to everyone,
Find your place, in the sun,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

I have learned life's lesson,
Fighters who always win
Are those who can take it right on the chin and grin!

And so I'll shout to everyone,
Find your place, in the sun,
Up on top of a rainbow,
Sweeping the clouds away!

-- Maurice Chevalier

The solitary reaper

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
0 listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands;
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings? -
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago;
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.

-- William Wordsworth

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-- Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village, though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-- Robert Frost

A prayer

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore