What the song is about
This soft lullaby describes a peaceful garden in the evening. The sun is low, the wind is soft and the trees do not move. The singer gently asks the child to close their eyes and fall asleep under the summer sky.
Useful words and expressions
- grass, flowers, trees, hill, wind, sun, sky: simple nature words
- green, low, soft, still, quiet, little, pretty, golden: describing words (adjectives)
- The sun is low: the sun is near the horizon, so it is evening
- The trees are still: the trees are not moving
- Close your eyes: a common phrase at bedtime
- underneath: under, below
- a secret: something that is hidden or not told to others
- lies: here it means is or can be found, not tells a lie
Grammar
- Present simple with be: The grass is green, The trees are still. Use is with one thing and are with more than one.
- Present simple with other verbs: The pretty flowers slowly grow. The secret lies has an -s because secret is one thing.
- Adjective before a noun: the little hill, the pretty flowers, the summer skies.
- Adverbs with -ly: slow → slowly. The adverb says how something happens.
- Imperative: Close your eyes. Use the base form of the verb to ask or tell someone to do something.
- Plural with -ies: sky → skies.
Song language: don't copy this
- Quiet on the little hill has no subject and no verb. It keeps the rhythm and rhymes with still. In normal speech, say: It is quiet on the little hill.
- Underneath the summer skies uses the plural skies to rhyme with eyes. In everyday English, people usually say under the summer sky.
- Where the golden secret lies is a poetic line chosen for the rhyme with eyes. It does not join to the line before it in normal grammar, so do not use it as a model for a sentence.