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Who really said it

I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Tree

Not Confucius — actually Ogden Nash Ogden Nash 1902–1971 · American poet of light verse
Disputed In copyright

The couplet opens “Song of the Open Road,” a four-line squib by Ogden Nash printed in The New Yorker of October 15, 1932 — a parody of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” Quote Investigator traces the Confucius credit to a March 1940 newspaper reader contest in Harlingen, Texas whose “Confucius Say” ascriptions were never meant seriously.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Tree” Ogden Nash, "Song of the Open Road," The New Yorker, October 15, 1932. Not Confucius: the "Confucius say" version began as a 1940 newspaper reader-contest joke. Verified at Quotle.info.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Confucius. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of Ogden Nash; the 1932 magazine text is published by Condé Nast in The New Yorker's archive). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Ogden Nash — American poet of light verse; New Yorker contributor. Theme: "I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Tree". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Tree". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The 1932 printing

Poem
Song of the Open Road
First published
The New Yorker, October 15, 1932, page 18
Author’s revision
The Face Is Familiar: The Selected Verse of Ogden Nash, 1940 (“Indeed” for “Perhaps”)
Parodies
“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, first published 1913

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree. Opening couplet

Only the opening couplet is reproduced here: the poem is four lines long and still under copyright. In the 1932 magazine text the third line begins “Perhaps”; in Nash’s 1940 selected verse he changed it to “Indeed.” The full 1932 text sits in The New Yorker’s archive ↗.

Magazine archive entry
Song of the Open Road, The New Yorker, October 15, 1932
Quote Investigator’s chronology of the billboard verse

Paper trail

In copyright

“Song of the Open Road” was first published in 1932 and reprinted in Nash’s collections from 1940 onward, so it remains under United States copyright — it is not public domain, and only the opening couplet is quoted here. The poem it parodies, Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” is public domain and readable in full in the 1914 collection Trees and Other Poems ↗.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How Confucius got the credit

Confucius lived in China around 551–479 BCE and had no opinions on roadside advertising. The credit is a residue of a 1930s American newspaper joke format, not of anything in the Confucian corpus.

Confucius Newspaper-contest joke

The earliest Confucius version Quote Investigator records is a reader-contest entry in the Valley Morning Star of Harlingen, Texas on March 9, 1940, in a column headed “Confucius Say” where every submission carried that prefix; QI notes the ascription was not intended to be taken seriously ↗.

“Nother Pome” / anonymous Byline stripped

In November 1932, within weeks of publication, the Queen City Mail of Spearfish, South Dakota reprinted the lines under the comic ascription “Nother Pome” — a pun on “another poem” — while the Bessemer Herald that same month credited “Ogden Nash in the New Yorker” ↗.

Circulating variants Wording drift

The 1932 magazine text begins the third line “Perhaps”; Nash himself replaced it with “Indeed” for his 1940 selected verse, and an Iowa garden column printed “And soon” in 1938 — all three are documented by Quote Investigator ↗.

The lines are Ogden Nash’s, printed under his name in The New Yorker on October 15, 1932; Quote Investigator credits the work to Nash ↗, and the magazine’s own archive carries his byline on it ↗.

Context

Why a joke about billboards outlived its author’s name

Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” was, by 1932, the most recited poem in America — which made its opening line the perfect thing to hijack. Nash kept Kilmer’s first line intact, swapped one noun in the second, and turned a hymn to nature into a complaint about roadside advertising. The gag works because the reader supplies the original.

Newspapers picked it up within weeks, and it escaped almost immediately. Quote Investigator’s chronology shows a South Dakota paper running it in November 1932 under the comic byline “Nother Pome,” a Macon garden-club speaker paraphrasing it that December, and an Iowa garden column printing an altered third line in 1938. By the time it reached a Texas “Confucius Say” contest in March 1940, the verse had been circulating unattached to its author for years.

Confucius say I think I shall never see, a billboard lovely as a tree.

Why “Confucius say” attracted it

The “Confucius Say” format was a 1930s American joke fad, not a claim about Chinese philosophy: papers invited readers to send in adages prefaced by the phrase, and printed them. Quote Investigator observes that competitions of this kind help explain the artificially amplified ubiquity of Confucius attributions. The entry that ran in the Valley Morning Star of Harlingen, Texas on March 9, 1940 was submitted by a reader, Mrs. Arthur J. Carpenter of Rio Hondo, and used Nash’s original “Perhaps” wording.

Even the “correct” version is unstable, because Nash revised it himself. If you want the text as it first appeared, the third line begins “Perhaps”; if you want the text Nash settled on for his 1940 selected verse, it begins “Indeed.” Both are his.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Treequoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: the 1932 New Yorker first printing, the variants, the 1940 revision, and the “Confucius Say” contest entry.
Song of the Open Road (The New Yorker archive)newyorker.com

The magazine’s own archive entry, bylined Ogden Nash, for the October 15, 1932 issue.
Ogden Nash on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the quatrain under the title “Song of the Open Road,” in the later “Indeed” wording, noting it parodies Kilmer.
Trees (poem)en.wikipedia.org

Kilmer’s original: first published in Poetry in August 1913; the article also records Nash’s billboard parody.
Trees and Other Poems (1914), full textgutenberg.org

Public-domain text of Kilmer’s collection, containing “Trees” and its opening couplet.
Quote Investigator: Confucius attributionsquoteinvestigator.com

The wider pattern — a catalogue of sayings pinned on Confucius that investigation traces elsewhere.

The actual author

Who Ogden Nash was

Ogden Nash

1902–1971 · American poet of light verse; New Yorker contributor

Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York, in 1902 and died in Baltimore in 1971. He made his name with deliberately lopsided rhymes and stretched-out lines, publishing his first collection, Hard Lines, in 1931 and briefly working on The New Yorker’s editorial staff that same year after Harold Ross responded warmly to his submissions. He wrote more than five hundred pieces of light verse, of which the billboard quatrain is among the most quoted — and the most often stripped of his name.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Nash, Ogden. “Song of the Open Road.” The New Yorker, October 15, 1932, 18. Revised version (“Indeed” for “Perhaps”) in The Face Is Familiar: The Selected Verse of Ogden Nash (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Company, 1941; first published 1940), 21, as cited by Quote Investigator.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Tree’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-think-that-i-shall-never-see-a-billboard-lovely-as-a-tree/

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