The Peace Of Wild Things

1968

Poem by Wendell Berry

Music by Lisa Reagan

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The Peace of Wild Things

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.

Lisa's Favorite Lines

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

Copyright © 2012 by Wendell Berry, from
New Collected Poems. Reprinted by
permission of Counterpoint Press