A Cockeyed Optimist

Rodgers & HammersteinSouth Pacific

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A Cockeyed Optimist

Lyrics By Oscar Hammerstein II  Music By Richard Rodgers

Ensign Nellie Forbush, a nurse from Arkansas, admires the view of the sun over the ocean, musing knowingly about her naturally sunny perspective.

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“A Cockeyed Optimist” LYRICS

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 whip-poor-will
Is selling me a bill
And telling me it just ain’t so!

I could say life is just a bowl of Jell-O
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!