Above the clear blue sky

John Chandler wrote the popular children's piece "Above the clear blue sky" as a rare departure from his usual liturgical work. The history of the text is uniquely documented through personal correspondence from the author himself. Writing from Putney on March 20, 1875, Chandler clarified his limited poetic output, noting that except for this single children's piece, he had composed no original hymns since the translations he published in his landmark 1837 volume, Hymns of the Primitive Church.

At the time of his writing, Chandler had spent four years away from home due to illness. Lacking access to his personal reference materials, he could only recall that the hymn had surfaced in an unnamed Irish collection several years prior.

Hymnologists later identified this Irish volume as most likely being the Dublin collection Hymns for Public Worship, published in 1856.

Bibliographical research eventually established an even earlier origin for the text. The hymn had actually been printed over a decade before its appearance in Ireland, debuting as entry Number 83 in Chandler's own smaller collection, Hymns of the Church, mostly Primitive, in 1841. The original layout was structured in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Following these discoveries, the piece secured a permanent position in church literature, achieving an extensive and lasting circulation across numerous denominational hymnals.