Hurt No Living Thing Lyrics
Seven lines in one sentence, asking children to leave eight small creatures alone: ladybird, butterfly, moth, cricket, grasshopper, gnat, beetle and worms. Christina Rossetti put it in Sing-Song, her book for small children.
Hurt No Living Thing
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/hurt-no-living-thing/
- Type
- Poems for Children, Animal Rhymes
- Written by
- Christina Rossetti
- Tune
- Said softly and slowly, one creature at a time
- Best for ages
- 2 to 7 years
What Does Hurt No Living Thing Mean?
The poem is one sentence. It opens with the rule, "Hurt no living thing", and everything after it is a list of examples. Each creature comes with a small description that makes it easier to picture. The ladybird is the British name for the ladybug, the moth has "dusty wing" because its wings are covered in tiny scales that rub off like powder, the cricket is "chirping cheerily", the grasshopper is "so light of leap", the gnat is a tiny flying insect, the beetle is "fat", and the worms are "harmless" and "creep".
Count the creatures and there are eight kinds. The word nor comes seven times, and each one adds another creature to the list. The sounds are tidy too: thing and wing rhyme, leap and creep rhyme, and gnat and fat rhyme inside a single line.
The poem gives a rule but no reason, which is why it works so well with small children: they supply the reasons themselves, by looking closely at what is on the leaf or the path.
History and Origin
Christina Rossetti was born in London in 1830, died there in 1894, and was the sister of the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her book Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book came out in 1872 and was written for very young children.
Learning Activities
- Look, don't touch: take a magnifying glass outdoors and find as many of the poem's creatures as you can, watching each one without picking it up.
- Eight in a row: draw all eight creatures in a line, in the order the poem names them, then say the poem along the row.
- Helping hand: if a worm or beetle is stuck on a hard path after rain, move it to soft earth with a leaf, and talk about why.
- Sound match: make the cricket's chirp, the gnat's whine and the grasshopper's jump, and let the others guess which creature it is.