"Inchworm", also known as "The Inch Worm", is a song originally performed by Danny Kaye in the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen.
The song's lyrics express a carpe diem sentiment, with the singer noting that the inchworm of the title has a "business-like mind", and is blind to the beauty of the flowers it encounters: Subsequent verses include the lines "Measuring the marigolds, you and your arithmetic / You'll probably go far" and "Seems to me you'd stop and see / How beautiful they are".
The composer received a fan letter (signed pseudonymously, "Respectfully, a Kansas inchworm") which said of the song: ...It is simple, yet it is so intricate, the harmony is perfect and the counterpoint — well it just gives me a headache when I think of what it would be like to try to write it...Loesser was so touched by the letter that he placed a large advertisement in the largest newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas — the Daily Journal World — in thanks.
[1][2] "Inchworm" has been recorded by many singers, including Paul McCartney, Rachelle Ferrell, The Brothers Creeggan, Anne Murray, Kenny Loggins, We Five, John Lithgow, Mary Hopkin, Doris Day, Dan Zanes, Kurt Wagner, Lisa Loeb, The Sandpipers, and Patricia Barber.
It kept bringing me back to the feelings of those pure thoughts of sadness that you have as a child, and how they’re so identifiable even when you’re an adult.