who said the greatest thing you'll ever learn
Nature Boy The lyrics of the song relate to a 1940s Los Angeles-based group called "Nature Boys", a subculture of proto-hippies of which ahbez was a member.[13] Instrumentalist Chris Tyle noted that the lyrics are a musical self-portrait of ahbez, with the lines like "There was a boy, A very strange, enchanted boy, They say he wandered very far, Very far, over land and sea". But he believed that it was the song's last line that made it the most poignant: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn, Is just to love and be loved in return".[14] Various interpretations of the line are given by academics, with the eponymous nature boy being a child, advising on love and relationship, or an adult hippie talking about his journey and inner-love. According to author Jeffrey P. Dennis, the song presented a homo-romantic theme, with the eponymous nature boy visiting Cole on a "magic day" and explaining that "the greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return".[15] Author Raymond Knapp described the track as a "mystically charged vagabond song" whose lyrics evoked an intense sense of loss and haplessness, with the final line delivering a universal truth, described by Knapp as "indestructible" and "salvaged somehow from the perilous journey of life".[16]