A Cockeyed Optimist

A Cockeyed Optimist

music by Richard Rodgers (left)

lyric by Oscar Hammerstein II (right)

When the sky is a bright canary yellow I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen--
So they call me a cockeyed optimist, immature and incurably green!
I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead---
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist, and I can't get it into my head.

I hear the human race is falling on its face and hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill is selling me a bill and telling me it just ain't so!

I could say life is just a bowl of jello and appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck, like a dope, with a thing called hope,
]And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart!