The lyric “The dark sacred...” is completed by “night” in Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”
The song was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss and recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967. Its gentle arrangement and Armstrong’s warm, gravelly vocal present ordinary scenes—trees, roses, skies, and people—as evidence of beauty and hope.
The recording was initially more successful in the United Kingdom than in the United States. It later gained a much larger American audience after appearing in films, television programs, and other popular media, including the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam.
The lyric places “dark sacred night” beside “bright blessed day,” creating a balanced image of the natural world. The contrast is central to the verse, so “night” is the precise completion rather than another time-of-day word.