Delft was a Dutch town of bridges and bricks,
The year was sixteen seventy-six,
There Antonie van Leeuwenhoek sold cloth,
But tiny things were hidden out of sight,
So he shaped tiny lenses, round and bright,
He set each lens inside a metal plate,
He held them up to the window light,
Then he caught some rain from the roof one day.
His microscope was a lens in brass,
It worked like a magnifying glass,
It made the tiny things look big,
And Leeuwenhoek looked and looked again,
He saw what we now call microbes,
Little Animals in the Rain.
He caught more rain and watched it day by day,
At first, he only saw a few, so small,
Then a thousand swam in a single drop,
A grain of sand was bigger than them all,
He sealed a letter and sent it out,
In London, scientists started to doubt,
Back home, he asked witnesses to look through,
They saw the little animals swim too.
His microscope was a lens in brass,
It worked like a magnifying glass,
It made the tiny things look big,
And Leeuwenhoek looked and looked again,
He saw what we now call microbes,
Little Animals in the Rain.
In London, scientist Robert Hooke tried,
But at first, the drops looked empty inside,
So he followed Leeuwenhoek's recipe,
And at last, Hooke saw them, plain to see.
Today, you use a microscope in class,
You drip some puddle water on the glass,
You turn the knob until the drop looks clear,
And swimming microbes suddenly appear.
His microscope was a lens in brass,
It worked like a magnifying glass,
It made the tiny things look big,
And Leeuwenhoek looked and looked again,
Now you can see the microbes too,
Little Animals in the Rain.
Through Leeuwenhoek's microscope, they looked big.
