The Wonderful World

  Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,   With the wonderful water round you curled,   And the wonderful grass upon your breast,   World, you are beautifully drest.   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 top of the hills.   You friendly Earth, how far do you go,   With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,   With cities and gardens, and cliffs 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 to-day,   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