Analysis of Great, Wide, Beautiful, Wonderful World

William Brighty Rands 1823 (Chelsea, Middlesex) – 1882 (East Dulwich, London)



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 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 tremble to think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
A whisper inside me seemed to say,
"You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot:
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!"


Scheme AAXA BBCC DDEE FFGGHH
Poetic Form
Metre 111001001 1010010111 0010010111 1111001 010011101 00100111001 1110100101 01101101101 110111111 101111001011 1100100101 01001111011 1111101111 1101111111 011111111 010011111 111101111101 1110100110
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 783
Words 149
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 148
Words per stanza (avg) 37
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 04, 2023

44 sec read
543

William Brighty Rands

William Brighty Rands (24 December 1823, Chelsea, Middlesex — 23 April 1882, East Dulwich, London) was a British writer and one of the major authors of nursery rhymes of the Victorian era.  more…

All William Brighty Rands poems | William Brighty Rands Books

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