The World Is Vast
THE world is vast and we are small,We are so weak and it so strong,Onward it goes, nor cares at allFor us,—our silence or our song,Our fast-day or our festival.
We tremble as we feel it swayBeneath our feet as on we fare;But, like a ball which children play,God spins it through the far blue air.We are his own; why should we care?
About this text
The World Is Vast is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Few More Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #49518; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Susan Coolidge, The World Is Vast, in A Few More Verses (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #49518, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coolidge-few-more-verses/the-world-is-vast.html, id L23507.
Form and metre
The World Is Vast is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABA smallA · strongB · allA · songB · festivalA
- 2 ABABB swayA · fareB · playA · airB · careB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| THE world is vast and we are small, | 8 | ········ |
| We are so weak and it so strong, | 8 | ········ |
| Onward it goes, nor cares at all | 8 | /˘······ |
| For us,—our silence or our song, | 8 | ··//˘·/· |
| Our fast-day or our festival. | 9 | /···/˘/˘˘ |
| We tremble as we feel it sway | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Beneath our feet as on we fare; | 8 | ··/····· |
| But, like a ball which children play, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| God spins it through the far blue air. | 8 | ········ |
| We are his own; why should we care? | 8 | ········ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.