The Wonderful World

Great, wide, wonderful, beautiful world,

With the beautiful water about 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,

And 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 to-day,

A whisper within me seemed to say:

"You are more than the earth, though you're such a dot;

You can love and think, and the world cannot."

William Brighty Rands

England, 1823-1880