• Lane real catalog artwork: Great Wide Beautiful Wonderful World
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Santa Barbara Music Publishing

Great, Wide, Beautiful, Wonderful World

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Recording: SSAA and Piano Performed by BYU Women's Chorus

SSAA and Piano · Publisher edition

About this song

  • Available forSSAA and Piano
  • MusicLane Johnson
  • WordsWilliam Brighty Rands
  • AccompanimentPiano
  • LevelIntermediate
  • Duration~4:00
  • Performance noteIdeal for University, Community, or High School treble choirs.

Great, Wide, Beautiful, Wonderful World (wow, that's a mouthful!)...

I have always felt a deep reverence for the beauties of this world we live in. I love to spend time enjoying the outdoors and all its magnificent variety. But even more importantly, I believe that we are all children of God and that he created this world and all its beauty for us, his most important creations. So, when I came across this poem, I was really drawn to it and I felt compelled to set it to music.

Lyrics
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!"
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