The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I walk in the night at the least sound  
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,  
I go and lie down where the wood drake  
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.  
I come into the peace of wild things  
who do not tax their lives with forethought  
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.  
And I feel above me the day blind stars  
waiting with their light. For a time  
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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