Little Songbooktraditional songs of the world
a child at a window beneath a sky full of stars

United Kingdom · sung in English

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is an English lullaby whose words come from Jane Taylor's 1806 poem "The Star", sung to the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman" — the same tune as the alphabet song.

▶ Watch on YouTube

Opens a YouTube search for this song in a new tab — nothing plays inside this page.

Lyrics

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.

#
Country of origin
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Sung in
English
Words by
Jane Taylor
First known
1806
Best for ages
1–6
Mood
lullaby, bedtime
Last updated
24 July 2026

How to sing it

  1. Sit somewhere you can see a window, and sing the first verse slowly — about one word per second is plenty.
  2. Open and close your hands on each "twinkle" to make the stars flicker.
  3. On "up above the world so high", lift both hands slowly overhead and hold them there.
  4. Sing the last line quieter than the one before it, and the song puts itself to bed.

Meaning and origin

Almost every English-speaking child learns this song, and almost nobody learns it as what it is: a short Romantic poem about not knowing something. Jane Taylor’s verse asks a question — how I wonder what you are — and never answers it. That small act of wondering is the whole song.

Taylor published the poem in 1806, in a book she wrote with her sister Ann called Rhymes for the Nursery. It ran to five verses, following the star through the night: it appears when the sun goes, it lights the traveller in the dark, it peeps through the curtains at a sleeping child, and it keeps shining until the sun returns. The version sung today is almost always just the opening four lines, sometimes with the second verse added.

The tune came from somewhere else entirely. “Ah! vous dirai-je, maman” was printed in France in 1761 as a simple air, and it turned out to be one of the most portable melodies ever written — Mozart wrote twelve piano variations on it, and in English it carries the alphabet song and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” as well. Words and tune were only married up later in the nineteenth century, which is why the poem scans so neatly against a melody its author never heard in connection with it.

It works as a lullaby for a practical reason. The melody moves in steady, even steps with no leaps to catch the voice, the rhyme scheme is flatly predictable, and the subject is fixed in one place in the sky. A child can follow it half-asleep, and an adult can sing it while thinking about something else entirely — which, at the end of a long day, is most of the point.

Common questions

Who wrote Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?
The words come from a poem called "The Star" by the English writer Jane Taylor, published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection she produced with her sister Ann. The tune is older and unrelated: it is the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman", first printed in 1761.
Is Twinkle, Twinkle the same tune as the ABC song?
Yes. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", the alphabet song and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" all use the same French melody, which is why children often slide from one into another without noticing.
How many verses does Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star have?
Jane Taylor's original poem has five verses, though almost everybody sings only the first. The second verse, in which the star appears once the sun has gone, is the one most often added at bedtime.
Did Mozart write Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?
No, though the confusion is understandable. Mozart wrote a set of piano variations on the same French tune in the early 1780s, more than twenty years after the melody was first published and long before Jane Taylor wrote the English words.

Sources

You might also like