Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star - all my life I knew the first verse and that was that, and thinking about this in my sleep I decided to see the whole poem
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
By Jane Taylor
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the traveler in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
How could he see where to go,
If you did not twinkle so?
In the dark blue sky you keep,
Often through my curtains peep
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveler in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
The lyrics to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, come from a poem titled "The Star" written by the English poet, Jane Taylor (1783-1824). Taylor published the poem in her book Rhymes for the Nursery in London in 1806.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, and The Alphabet Song all share the same tune! The famous melody is also used in many other songs including German, Hungarian, Spanish, and Turkish Christmas carols. So who composed this famous tune? Many people think it was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but that's not true. The tune is actually an old French melody titled "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman" ("Shall I tell you, Mother?") that first appeared without words in Les Amusements d'une Heure et Demy by M. Bouin in Paris in 1761. Twenty years later, when Mozart was 25 or 26, he composed a set of 12 improvisations based on "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman."
DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST (being that shortest day of year)
DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST
(being that shortest day of year)
Today, the sun rolls on the tops
Of the elms and soonest drops
Into the pinewood at the west.
The hens are scarcely off the nest
To scratch for hot corns in the straw
Before the umber shadows draw
Across the henhouse, and they must
Fly to roost in clouds of dust.
The cows eyes grow their biggest early
The ferns of frost renew their curly
Fronds the soonest on the pane,
The little mice creep to the grain.
While little ponds are hardly thawed
Before their surfaces are flawed
With new needles of green cold.
Farmhouse windows turn to gold
At barely half-past three o’clock.
The briefer sun, the longer talk
By fireside , where sweet the bloom
Of popcorn flowers scents the room,
And the roasting herring’s smoke
Mingles with the smell of oak.
In the sunlight of old wood
Homely furniture looks so good,
A star shines in each scoured pan,
And it feels good to be a man.
Robert B. Tristram Coffin
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