Glad That I Live Am I

The sun is still shining, and (though I suspect winter won't have gone for good just yet) today certainly counts as the first Sunday of spring, 2012. I've been thinking about a song that was a favourite from my schooldays, and which is highly appropriate to a bright and cheerful day like today: 'Glad that I live am I, that the sky is blue.' It's been chosen for a service tomorrow, and I've been very glad to have re-made its acquaintance after so many years. Though in its original words it is not definitively a Christian hymn, it was chosen for "Songs of Praise" by Percy Dearmer and his associates, and that was the hymnbook we used at assembly.

The words of this song have always seemed to me the epitome of English rural life, so it's a slight surprise to find that it's an American song, written by Lizette Woodworth Reese, a native of Maryland, who taught English in Baltimore for much of her long life. She was born in 1856 and died in 1935, and, as a poet, was compared to Emily Dickinson. This little poem is entitled "A Little Song of Life", and so, I suppose, designed to be sung:

Glad that I live am I;
That the sky is blue;
Glad for the country lanes,
And the fall of dew.

After the sun the rain,
After the rain the sun;
This is the way of life,
Till the work be done.

All that we need to do,
Be we low or high,
Is to see that we grow
Nearer the sky.

It has been set to a number of tunes, but the tune we used at school, and will sing tomorrow, is "Water End". It's an appropriately happy and jaunty tune, for such uplifting words. It's good to have a day now and again just to be happy on. I've been to church, pruned my roses, eaten a fair helping of sticky toffee pudding and custard, the sun's still shining, and all's pretty well with the world. Since I'm normally quite a grumpy sod, and my own poems often reflect that (as my wife so often reminds me), here for a change is my own short poem entitled "Happy Poem", written on a day just like today a few years ago when we lived in Cressage, Shropshire.

Today spring was switched on suddenly.
Like a lamp.
The world in our street was all short-sleeves and lawnmowers,
the daffodils burst open in unison,
and the birds all sang their little hearts out.
Sun sparkled on everything,
and even I had to smile.