THE WONDERFUL WORLD

    Great, wide, wonderful, beautiful world,
    With the wonderful water around you curled,
    And the wonderful grass upon your breast--
    World, you are beautifully dressed!

    The wonderful air is over me,
    And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree;
    It walks on the water and whirls the mills,
    And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

    You friendly Earth, how far do you go,
    With wheat fields that nod, and rivers that flow,
    With cities and gardens, and oceans and isles,
    And people upon you for thousands of miles?

    Ah, you are so great and I am so small,
    I hardly can think of you, World, at all;
    And yet, when I said my prayers today,
    My mother kissed me, and said, quite gay:

    “If the wonderful World is great to you,
    And great to father and mother, too,
    You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot,
    You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!”

                                                                        William Brighty Rands