What is it about the poem “Who killed Cock Robin?” It is so sad, and so coolly dark: a miniature drama played out in the shade of a single tree. The sparrow confesses right away, and nobody minds. The fly – “I, said the fly, with my little eye, I saw him die” – is a witness of whom no questions are asked. Everyone seems eager for the burial, eager to help, insincere in their mourning, “a-sighing and sobbing”.
Everything is small. The fish catching blood in his “little dish”, the rook playing parson with his “little book”. The death of a little bird, and a funeral for a bird the size, and almost the shape, of an orange, and weighing no more than an orange segment.
