Newbie problem with lists

[Jacob H]

Hello everyone..

I'm a relatively inexperienced programmer just starting with Python.
(I like it a lot.) I've been playing with the Pygame module and simple
graphics display. I decided to write a function that would split its
string argument into appropriate lines for the Pygame font module to
display. In doing so, I ran into misunderstandings with lists, I
think, and I'm stumped. Here's the code I wrote for the function:

def render_text(str):

    charcount = 0    #how many characters from the current line so
far?
    colwidth = 58    #max characters per line
    wordlist = string.split(str)    #split str into words
    text = ''    #contents of current line
    lines = []    #the output list
    y = 10    #tells font where to draw on y axis
    
    for word in wordlist:
	
	wordlen = len(word)

	if (wordlen + charcount + 1) > colwidth:
            lines.append(text)
	    text = word + ' '
	    charcount = wordlen + 1
	else:
	    text = text + word + ' '
	    charcount = charcount + (wordlen + 1)

    for i in range(0, len(lines)):
        
        # print lines[i]
        # these last three lines are Pygame stuff and  unrelated 
        # to problem, I think

        line = font.render(lines[i], 1, (255, 255, 255))
        gamecol.blit(line, (10, y))
        y = y + 20


What I expect to get is a list of formatted lines that all display.
Instead, I get only one element to display - as if I'd written print
lines[0]. If anyone could enlighten me as to I'm missing (simple, I'm
sure) I'd be delighted. :)