Answer to a Child's Question Lyrics
Asked what the birds say, the poem answers: they sing that they love. In winter they are quiet, but when green leaves and warm weather return, the lark sings so much for joy that it never stops. Ten lines in five rhyming pairs.
Answer to a Child's Question
Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,
The linnet and thrush say, "I love and I love!"
In the winter they're silent, the wind is so strong;
What it says I don't know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing and loving all come back together;
Then the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings and he sings, and forever sings he,
"I love my Love, and my Love loves me."
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/answer-to-a-childs-question/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Tune
- Warm and open, building towards the lark in the last four lines
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does Answer to a Child's Question Mean?
The poem is a real answer to a question many children ask. The birds named are the sparrow, the dove, the linnet (a small brown songbird) and the thrush, and the poet says that all of them sing the same words, "I love and I love!" In winter the birds are silent because "the wind is so strong", and the poet admits not to know what the wind itself says, only that its song is loud.
Then the seasons turn. Green leaves and blossoms, and sunny warm weather come back, and the singing comes back with them. The lark, a bird that sings while it flies high above a field, is so "brimful" of gladness that it sings without stopping. Its song is the last line of the poem: "I love my Love, and my Love loves me."
The rhymes come in pairs, dove with love, strong with song, weather with together, love with above and he with me, which makes the poem easy to speak in a steady beat.
History and Origin
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 to 1834) was an English poet and critic. The poem is signed with his name in Songs for the Little Ones at Home, a collection first published in 1884 and revised in 1911.
As its title says, the poem is a reply to a child's question. It puts the question first and gives the answer straight after, as a parent might when asked about birdsong on a walk.
Learning Activities
- Listen for birds: go outside and listen for a few minutes, then ask what each bird might be saying.
- Two seasons: draw a winter picture with silent birds and a spring picture with a singing lark, and compare them.
- Learn the last line: teach I love my Love, and my Love loves me and say it at the start of a walk.
- Rhyme pairs: read the first line of each pair and let the child supply the matching word.