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Just whistle a bit if the day be dark And the sky be overcast: If mute be the voice of the piping lark, Why, pipe your own small blast. And it's wonderful how o'er the gray sky-track, The truant warbler comes stealing back. But why need he come? for your soul's at rest, And the song in the heart,—ah, that is best.

Just whistle a bit if the day be dark And the sky be overcast: If mute be the voice of the piping lark, Why, pipe your own small blast. And it's wonderful how o'er the gray sky-track, The truant warbler comes stealing back. But why need he come? for your soul's at rest, And the song in the heart,—ah, that is best.

Approximate author period: c. 1889 AD · industrial

Meaning not yet available

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1889 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1872–1906)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)

Complete signed selection 292; printed byline: Paul Laurence Dunbar; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.