Poetry Revisited: The Wonderful World by William Brighty Rands

The Wonderful World

(from Lilliput Lectures: 1871)

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 today,
A whisper within me seemed to say:

“You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot!
You can love and think, and the Earth can not.”

William Brighty Rands (1823-1882)
British writer