12

The Wonderful World

William B. Rands

Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,

With the wonderful water round 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 it talks to itself on the tops 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' re such a dot;

You can love and think, and the Earth cannot! ”

A Backward Look

When your Book Comrade led you through the world of Nature, he told you to keep your eyes wide open, your ears alert. If you did so, you saw wonderful sights and learned many secrets of the Out-of-Doors.

The poets and story-tellers told you to look with curious and eager eyes at even the smallest animal, bird, and flower, until you saw many interesting things that a careless glance would never notice. When you watched Bunnyboy in the woods, Mishook in his forest home, and the brood of baby partridges, you saw how woodland mothers teach their children to protect themselves in field and forest. What do you know about the birds and animals that live near your home? How many of them can you name? In what kind of homes do they live?

After listening to what the poets and story-tellers have told you, do you feel a greater love for the Out-of-Doors? Perhaps you would like to make the prayer, “For All Little Birds, ” your very own; then memorize these lines. It would be fun to build bird houses and put up feeding shelves for the birds.