What Is Pink? Lyrics
Eight questions, eight answers: a rose is pink, a poppy red, the sky blue, a swan white, pears yellow, grass green, evening clouds violet, and an orange is, well, orange. Christina Rossetti's sixteen lines are a colour lesson in rhyme.
What Is Pink?
What is pink? a rose is pink
By the fountain's brink.
What is red? a poppy's red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro'.
What is white? a swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow: pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? the grass is green.
With small flowers between.
What is violet? clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? why, an orange,
Just an orange!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/what-is-pink/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Christina Rossetti
- Tune
- Read as a question and an answer, with a different voice for each
- Best for ages
- 2 to 6 years
What Does What Is Pink? Mean?
Each colour gets a question and an answer in a pair of lines. What is pink? A rose, by the edge of a fountain. What is red? A poppy, in its bed of barley. What is blue? The sky, where the clouds float through. What is white? A swan, sailing in the light. What is yellow? Pears, which are "rich and ripe and mellow". What is green? Grass, with small flowers dotted between. What is violet? The clouds in a summer twilight. And what is orange? "Why, an orange, just an orange!"
The last answer is the clever part. Orange is the famous English word with no easy rhyme, so Rossetti rhymes it with itself: "an orange, just an orange". All the other colours are shown by a different object, but here the colour and the fruit share a name, so there is nothing else to point at.
Some words: a brink is an edge, mellow describes fruit that is soft and sweet when ripe, and twilight is the soft light just after the sun sets. The pairs pink and brink, red and bed, blue and through, white and light, and yellow and mellow all rhyme.
History and Origin
Christina Rossetti (1830 to 1894) wrote the poem for Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book, first printed in 1872. The book is made of short poems for young children.
Learning Activities
- Colour hunt: ask the children to find one thing in the room for each colour in the poem, then compare their answers with Rossetti's.
- Your own verse: write a new pair of lines for brown, black or grey, starting "What is brown?"
- Paint chart: paint eight squares in the poem's colours and label each with Rossetti's object.
- Orange game: hold up an orange and ask what colour it is. The answer is the same as the fruit.