Home ⇒ 📌Wendell Berry ⇒ The peace of wild things
The peace of wild things
When despair grows in me
And I wake in the middle of 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 for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot Of Peace Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low; With shield of proof shield me from out the press Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw! O make in me […]...
- Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body Love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. […]...
- O Sun of Real Peace O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend! O so amazing and broad-up there resplendent, darting and burning! O vision prophetic, stagger’d with […]...
- Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning There’s a breathless hush on the freeway tonight Beyond the ledges of concrete Restaurants fall into dreams With candlelight couples Lost Alexandria still burns In a billion lightbulbs Lives cross lives Idling at stoplights Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs ‘Souls eat souls in the general emptiness’ A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window A yogi […]...
- Mail Call The letters always just evade the hand One skates like a stone into a beam, falls like a bird. Surely the past from which the letters rise Is waiting in the future, past the graves? The soldiers are all haunted by their lives. Their claims upon their kind are paid in paper That established a […]...
- Peace on Earth He took a frayed hat from his head, And “Peace on Earth” was what he said. “A morsel out of what you’re worth, And there we have it: Peace on Earth. Not much, although a little more Than what there was on earth before I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod,- But never mind the ways […]...
- PEACE OF MIND Carry me out the ocean, where My drifting thoughts flow free. Guide them to a far distant land, That only the mind can see. There I shall paint a great portrait, Of what this world should be. A place without seneless wars, And human poverty....
- Peace I IN EXCELSIS Two dwellings, Peace, are thine. One is the mountain-height, Uplifted in the loneliness of light Beyond the realm of shadows, fine, And far, and clear, where advent of the night Means only glorious nearness of the stars, And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars That long the lower world in twilight keep. […]...
- Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women (from a song) Perhaps I was born kneeling, Born coughing on the long winter, Born expecting the kiss of mercy, Born with a passion for quickness And yet, as things progressed, I learned early about the stockade Or taken out, the fume of the enema. By two or three I learned not to kneel, Not […]...
- By the Hoof of the Wild Goat By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed From the cliff where she lay in the Sun Fell the Stone To the Tarn where the daylight is lost, So she fell from the light of the Sun And alone! Now the fall was ordained from the first With the Goat and the Cliff and the […]...
- The Wild Old Wicked Man Because I am mad about women I am mad about the hills,’ Said that wild old wicked man Who travels where God wills. ‘Not to die on the straw at home. Those hands to close these eyes, That is all I ask, my dear, From the old man in the skies. Daybreak and a candle-end. […]...
- The Rose Of Peace If Michael, leader of God’s host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven’s door-post He would his deeds forget. Brooding no more upon God’s wars In his divine homestead, He would go weave out of the stars A chaplet for your head. And all folk seeing him bow down, And […]...
- Part In Peace: Is Day Before Us? Part in peace: is day before us? Praise His Name for life and light; Are the shadows lengthening o’er us? Bless His care Who guards the night. Part in peace: with deep thanksgiving, Rendering, as we homeward tread, Gracious service to the living, Tranquil memory to the dead. Part in peace: such are the praises […]...
- In this World The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, Tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses Are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill Dark floodwater moves down the river. The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing. I have climbed up to water the horses And now sit and rest, […]...
- Joy and Peace in Believing Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord who rises With healing on His wings; When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again A season of clear shining, To cheer it after rain. In holy contemplation We sweetly then pursue The theme of God’s salvation, And find it ever […]...
- The Peace Of Dives The Word came down to Dives in Torment where he lay: “Our World is full of wickedness, My Children maim and slay, “And the Saint and Seer and Prophet “Can make no better of it “Than to sanctify and prophesy and pray. “Rise up, rise up, thou Dives, and take again thy gold, “And thy […]...
- The Child Dying Unfriendly friendly universe, I pack your stars into my purse, And bid you so farewell. That I can leave you, quite go out, Go out, go out beyond all doubt, My father says, is the miracle. You are so great, and I so small: I am nothing, you are all: Being nothing, I can take […]...
- A Tooth upon Our Peace A Tooth upon Our Peace The Peace cannot deface Then Wherefore be the Tooth? To vitalize the Grace The Heaven hath a Hell Itself to signalize And every sign before the Place Is Gilt with Sacrifice...
- A Strange Wild Song He thought he saw an Elephant That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. “At length I realize,” he said, “The bitterness of life!” He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister’s Husband’s Niece. “Unless you […]...
- Oh Future! thou secreted peace Oh Future! thou secreted peace Or subterranean woe Is there no wandering route of grace That leads away from thee No circuit sage of all the course Descried by cunning Men To balk thee of thy sacred Prey Advancing to thy Den...
- Sonnet XXII: Wild Is the Foaming Sea Wild is the foaming Sea! The surges roar! And nimbly dart the livid lightnings round! On the rent rock the angry waves rebound; Ah me! the less’ning bark is seen no more! Along the margin of the trembling shore, Loud as the blast my frantic cries shall sound, My storm-drench’d limbs the flinty fragments wound, […]...
- Wild Peaches 1 When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold colour. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and […]...
- Promise Of Peace The heads of strong old age are beautiful Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet, Integrity, health, soundness, to the full They’ve dealt with life and been tempered by it. A young man must not sleep; his years are war, Civil and foreign but the former’s worse; But the old can breathe in […]...
- In Salutation to the Eternal Peace Men say the world is full of fear and hate, And all life’s ripening harvest-fields await The restless sickle of relentless fate. But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born, When from the climbing terraces of corn I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn. What care I for the world’s desire and pride, […]...
- Peace 1 My Soul, there is a country 2 Afar beyond the stars, 3 Where stands a winged sentry 4 All skillful in the wars; 5 There, above noise and danger 6 Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles, 7 And One born in a manger 8 Commands the beauteous files. 9 He is thy gracious friend […]...
- To let them die peace There wasn’t room for sympathy, The epicentre moved too rapidly for that And even when we knew the anger Of the dispossessed the storm had passed. It blew into their lives already stressed By large events with precedents that rose From dark and baleful incidents beyond The wildest stretch of their naïve imagination. Ululation for […]...
- 229. Song-Anna, thy Charms ANNA, thy charms my bosom fire, And waste my soul with care; But ah! how bootless to admire, When fated to despair! Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair, To hope may be forgiven; For sure ’twere impious to despair So much in sight of heaven....
- Piping Down the Valleys Wild Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again.’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
- Waiting For The Miracle (co-written by Sharon Robinson) Baby, I’ve been waiting, I’ve been waiting night and day. I didn’t see the time, I waited half my life away. There were lots of invitations And I know you sent me some, But I was waiting For the miracle, for the miracle to come. I know you really loved me. […]...
- The River In my first sleep I came to the river And looked down Through the clear water – Only in dream Water so pure, Laced and undulant Lines of flow On its rocky bed Water of life Streaming for ever. A house was there Beside the river And I, arrived, An expected guest About to explore […]...
- Psalm 25 part 1 v.1-11 S. M. Waiting for pardon and direction. I Lift my soul to God, My trust is in his name: Let not my foes that seek my blood Still triumph in my shame. Sin, and the powers of hell, Persuade me to despair: Lord, make me know thy cov’nant well, That I may ‘scape the […]...
- Psalm 84 part 2 God and his church; or, Grace and glory. Great God, attend, while Zion sings The joy that from thy presence springs: To spend one day with thee on earth Exceeds a thousand days of mirth. Might I enjoy the meanest place Within thy house, O God of grace, Not tents of ease, nor thrones of […]...
- Fragment At last I entered a long dark gallery, Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side Were the bodies of men from far and wide Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead. “The sense of waiting here strikes strong; Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me; What are you waiting for so long? What is to happen?” […]...
- Elegy Too proud to die; broken and blind he died The darkest way, and did not turn away, A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride On that darkest day. Oh, forever may He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow Young among the long […]...
- Sojourns in the Parallel World We live our lives of human passions, Cruelties, dreams, concepts, Crimes and the exercise of virtue In and beside a world devoid Of our preoccupations, free From apprehension though affected, Certainly, by our actions. A world Parallel to our own though overlapping. We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly Admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too. Whenever […]...
- Hymn 12 Free grace in revealing Christ. Luke 10:21. Jesus, the man of constant grief, A mourner all his days; His spirit once rejoiced aloud, And tuned his joy to praise: “Father, I thank thy wondrous love, That hath revealed thy Son To men unlearned, and to babes Has made thy gospel known. “The mysteries of redeeming […]...
- Monday Night May 11th 1846 / Domestic Peace Why should such gloomy silence reign; And why is all the house so drear, When neither danger, sickness, pain, Nor death, nor want have entered here? We are as many as we were That other night, when all were gay, And full of hope, and free from care; Yet, is there something gone away. The […]...
- The Wild Iris At the end of my suffering There was a door. Hear me out: that which you call death I remember. Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun Flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive As consciousness Buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which […]...
- Psalm XIX: The Heavens Declare Thy Glory, Lord The heavens declare thy glory, Lord, In every star thy wisdom shines; But when our eyes behold thy word, We read thy name in fairer lines. The rolling sun, the changing light, And night and day, thy power confess; But the blest volume thou hast writ Reveals thy justice and thy grace. Sun, moon, and […]...
- He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white; The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, The East her hidden joy before the morning break, The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away, The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire: O […]...