roads are brown, and the sea is green,
But his house is like a bathing-machine;
The world is round, and he can ride,
Rumble and slash, to the other side!

With the peddler-man I should like to roam,
And write a book when I came home;
All the people would read my book,
Just like the Travels of Captain Cook!

321

THE WONDERFUL WORLD

WILLIAM BRIGHTY 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 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 the 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!"

322

Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton,
1809-1885), an English poet, wrote one poem
that has held its own in children's
collections. Its quiet mood of industry at one
with the gentler influences of nature is
especially appealing.

GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-MORNING

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES

A fair little girl sat under a tree,
Sewing as long as her eyes could see;
Then smoothed her work and folded it right
And said, "Dear work, good-night, good-night!"

Such a number of rooks came over her head,
Crying "Caw! Caw!" on their way to bed,
She said, as she watched their curious flight,
"Little black things, good-night, good-night!"

The horses neighed, and the oxen lowed,
The sheep's "Bleat! Bleat!" came over the road;
All seeming to say, with a quiet delight,
"Good little girl, good-night, good-night!"

She did not sa