Pretty Things
Pretty poppies,
Pretty trees,
Pretty little lettuce-leaves,
Pretty pebbles,
Red and brown,
Pretty floating thistle-down.
Pretty baby,
Curly head,
Standing in a pansy-bed,
Pretty clouds
All white and curled —
O the great, big pretty world!
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
This is one of those rhymes that feels like a child simply pointing at the world in wonder — poppies, pebbles, puffy clouds — everything is “pretty,” and that’s enough reason to love it. There’s no plot, no lesson, no joke — just pure noticing. It reads like a toddler’s delighted inventory of the universe.
The moment that seals it is the line “standing in a pansy-bed” — you can see the chubby little shoes right among the flowers, utterly guiltless and proud. And the ending doesn’t shrink things — it explodes them: not just a nice flower or two, but “the great, big pretty world.”
