Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

In 1915, Ivor Novello and Lena Gilbert Ford composed the wartime song Keep the Home Fires Burning. One of the tune's verses says: There's a silver lining/Through the dark clouds shining/Turn the dark clouds inside out/Till the boys come home. Novello and Ford were not the first to use the encouraging reminder to look for silver-lined clouds during times of hardship, but they did set if firmly in the minds of 20th century Americans.

The notion of the silver lining was centuries old by the time this WWI song was composed. It was introduced by the English poet John Milton in his 1634 dramatic poem Comus. The first scene depicts an English Lady lost in a dark, wild wood. As she prays for rescue, she sees a hopeful sign in the heavens. "Was I decieved," she says, "or did a sable cloud turn forth her silver lining on the night?"

Two centuries after the publication of Milton's poem, Charles Dickens again invoked the image in his 1852 novel Bleak House, where he wrote, "I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's cloud."

Other writers began to follow Dickens' lead. In 1885 W.S. Gilbert wrote in The Mikado, "Don't let's be downhearted. There's a silver lining to every cloud."

Other literary and popular offerings of this phrase have made it a proverbial encouragement for finding hope in the face of adversity.

Radio Script > Silver Lining