There is a Giant in the world
Whose head is up so high,
He has to get down on his knees
To look up in the sky.
And when he feels the need of food,
He wades out in the sea
And fishes out a whale or two
Just right to fricassee.
Or if he’s near to Hindustan
He gathers up a few
Young elephants with jungle brush
For oriental stew.
And when he tires of earthly food
His diet, as a rule,
Consists of planets roasted well
And hung outside to cool.
He sends his wife to gather them;
She brings them on a tray;
For cream to make the planet sauce
She skims the Milky Way.
When Mrs. Giant cooks, the steam
Floats off across the sky
In clouds that drop the rain that keeps
The world from getting dry.
And sometimes when the clouds are dark,
The Giant gets his gun
And shoots it in their very midst--
Because he likes the fun.
But when the sky is clear all day,
Without a cloud in sight,
The Giant finds his supper cold
When he gets home at night.
Whenever Mrs. Giant goes
To tidy up the room,
She picks a comet ’cause its tail
Is handy for a broom.
The Giant drinks, to quench his thirst,
A whirling water-spout;
He gave up drinking mountain lakes
Lest he should have the gout.
He puts a forest in his pipe
When he’s inclined to smoke,
And lights his match upon the moon;
The moon can’t see the joke!
I think, my child, were you a moon,
’Way off in stellar space,
You’d feel put out if anyone
Scratched matches on your face!
The Giant dresses up sometimes
And goes to take a stroll;
And picks a little bunch of stars
To deck his buttonhole.
He’s mighty careful which he takes;
He knows the ones to shun;
He burned his fingers badly once
By fooling with the Sun.
And once in absent minded mood
He picked a nettle star;--
He ran a-yelling all the way
From Rome to Zanzibar!
The islands are his stepping-stones,
The continents his bed;
He slept on Greenland once and caught
A snuffle in his head.
He slides around the Arctic Pole;
And if he gets a chill
He goes and sits a month or two
In India or Brazil.
He caught his trousers on Cape Horn
And tore an awful slit;
He stayed in bed a season while
His wife embroidered it;
She fixed it with a patch of sky;
It didn’t show a bit!
When walking through a mountain land,
He sometimes stubs his toe;
The shock is called an earthquake by
The frightened folks below.
Our weather only comes about
Up to the Giant’s knees;
The rest of him sticks up above
As pleasant as you please.
So, when he wants to dust his shoes,
He only has to stand
A minute in the middle of
Some handy, windy land.
He saw the men who went to dig
The Panama Canal.
He slapped his knees and laughed until
He grew hysterical.
He could have finished that Canal
With half a dozen kicks;
But he had promised not to get
Mixed up in politics!
One night a great astronomer,
While gazing into space,
By chance looked through his telescope
Right in the Giant’s face.
He thought it was the moon until
The Giant winked his eye;--
The wise man never dared again
To search the starry sky.
We never see the Giant, for
On seeing us he flies,
Because he feels so ill at ease
And conscious of his size.