We find great charm in this short lyric, for its form is unusual, its music joyous and its sentiment fine. Three lines of four feet each, a line of three feet, two lines of two feet each, and one line of three feet make up each stanza. The accent in each foot is on the last syllable, but some of the feet are only two syllables long. It's a merry meter. It scarcely can be read without stirring a rollicking melody in the ears of the listener. That's the art in the poem. The sentiment is as fine as the music. "The world's running over with joy! I'm as happy as happy can be." If the little brown thrush keeps singing that song the heart of everyone who hears it will overflow with joy. But it would be easy, very easy indeed, to stop the joyous song of the thrush by meddling with the five pretty eggs, and when the thrush changed his happy song to harsh notes of fear and reproach, the light of joy would fade from our day as quickly as from his. _The Child's World_ (Volume II, page 66) The unique measures of this brief poem make a melodious whole that every child will appreciate. Unless some care is taken in reading it aloud, however, much of its beauty will be lost. This is particularly true of the first stanza, from the first and last lines of which a syllable has been omitted. The absence of these syllables must be indicated by pauses or by giving more time to the word "great" in the first line, and to the word "world" in the last line. The idea may be indicated by supposing that the word "O" has been omitted from the beginning of the first and last line. The first line of the last couplet is peculiar in that every one of the four feet contains three syllables with the accent on the last. All the other lines consist each of four feet of either two or three syllables. Technically the poem is anapestic tetrameter much varied by the introduction of iambic feet. (See the studies in meter, Volume VII, pages 2 and 13.) The rhymes are all in couplets and are perfect. The stanzas, like paragraphs, indicate changes in thought. Its pleasing unity rests in the fact that it is all a child's thoughts about the world. It is logical, a real leading up of thought to natural climax. The child begins with wonder and a sense of beauty around her. The world is great and wide and wonderful and beautiful. She thinks of the sea she has read about or seen and thinks of the wonderful water curling up in waves above the shore. To her the world is the land with the wonderful growing grass upon its broad breast, and this marks the end of her first thought--the great world is beautifully dressed. Next as she sits on the brow of the hill and gazes over the lowland the breezes blow her hair about her face and her mind passes to the wonderful air that as wind shakes the trees, ripples the water, whirls the mills and sings through the trees on the tops of the hills.