Five Childhood Lyrics is a choral composition by John Rutter, who set five texts, poems and nursery rhymes, for mixed voices (SATB with some divisi) a cappella.

The text of the second song is "The Owl and the Pussycat", a nonsense-poem by Edward Lear published in 1871.

The text for the fourth song is "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", a nursery rhyme and evening prayer.

I chose for my texts some of the rhymes and verses remembered from my earliest years, and set them to music as simply as I could—though the last of the five, which uses a familiar nursery tune, contains a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek elaboration.

[1] They were recorded in 2002 on an album of secular music by Rutter, with Nicol Matt conducting the Nordic Chamber Choir.