Skylark (1941)

Mercer/Carmichael

"And in your lonely flight haven't you heard the music in the night?

Wonderful music: Faint as a will o' the wisp, crazy as a loon

Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon."

A song that has and needs no verse, Skylark is one of Carmichael's most beloved and well-known songs, though it is a bear of a song to try and play or sing unless you really know the melody and the chord changes (especially the bridge.) Johnny Mercer was inspired, as he mostly is, with his dreamy, melancholic images that evoke a Southern evening. It is hard to read Percy Blythe Shelley's Ode to a Skylark and not think that Mercer read and re-read the poem many times. The No Sleeping Dogs blog analyzes what makes the skylark so special here.

CHORUS

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 to be kissed?

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 in the night?

Wonderful music

Faint as a will o' the wisp

Crazy as a loon

Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon

Oh 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?