There's A Good Time Coming

There's a Good Time Coming was a popular poem written by Charles Mackay and set to music by Henry Russell and was one of that composer of popular music's best-known works in the middle of the nineteenth century.

There's a good time coming, boys, a good time coming:

We may not live to see the day, but Earth shall glisten in the ray of the good time coming:

Cannonballs may aid the truth, But thought's a weapon stronger:

We'll win our battle with its aid;- Wait a little longer.

Independent testimony quoted by John Dodds indicates that the song was popular with new immigrants to the United States; it was recorded as being sung on the emigrant ships as they approached New York Harbour.

The pen shall supersede the sword,

And right not might, shall be the lord

In the good time coming;

Worth, not truth, shall rule mankind,

And be acknowledged stronger...

Famous quotes containing the words there a, time and/or coming:

    “Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
    That fountain is there among its scalloped
    green and gray stones,
    it is still there and always there....”
    —Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    “Custom calls me to’t.
    What custom wills, in all things should we do’t,
    The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
    And mountainous error be too highly heaped
    For truth to o’erpeer.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “Gloucester. Nor further, sir, a man may rot even here.
    Edgar. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
    Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
    Ripeness is all.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)