"I Love You, World"

MIRACLES, collected by Richard Lewis. 215 pages. Simon & Schuster. $4.95.

The world seldom rewards youthful poetic flights with more than an indulgent pat on the head. Children's poetry usually gets published in block letters on the classroom wall, commissioned by the teacher and dutifully admired by proud parents on go-to-school nights. If some young Ariel occasionally soars past the lyrical altitude expected of his years, the world only marvels at his precocity. But Richard Lewis, 31, believes that children are born poets who move surely through the language of metaphor and song, and he offers this anthology in evidence.

His conviction grew in the creative writing course that he taught at Manhattan's Walden School. There, Lewis developed a profound respect for the spontaneity and grace with which youngsters can compose poetry. In 1964, he spent ten months on a tour of English-speaking countries that took him through the British Isles, Africa, India, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Canada and most of the United States. From schools, from the secret notebooks of children too shy to recite, and from the mouths of children too young to write, he collected 3,000 poems or almost-poems, the best of which constitute Miracles.

The contributors evoke that wondrous green time before the disciplinarians of life--and of verse--suppress the poet that probably lurks in most people.

"Have you ever felt like nobody?"

writes Karen Crawford, 9. "Just a tiny speck of air./ When everyone's around you,/ And you are just not there." Brian Andrews, 10, understands loneliness too:

"The doors in my house/ Are used every day/ For closing rooms/ And locking children away." But Pauline Costello, 5, knows how to defeat it:

When I was playing, I said to myself, "I'm all alone And no one comes."

So I go and see What they are doing.

At six, Benny has mastered more of the mysteries of life than of language:

It doesn't hurt no place when I'm sad I just know I'm sad.

Diane, 10, perceives the oneness of things:

The wind is half the flower Because it is in the flower.

The white flower is in the clouds.

And Paul, 7, bursts with the uncontainable joys of his years:

/ love you, Big World.

I wish I could call you A nd tell you a secret; That I love you, World.

The charmed reader may want to know more than Anthologist Lewis reveals about his contributors, who are identified only by name, age and the countries where he found them. If the spark can burn so widely and so brightly, and at so lovely an age, what kindles it? Who nourishes it? And why does it sometimes go out? Lewis is content to let the poets be judged by their work, and perhaps he is right.

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