The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake 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.