The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell-berry
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The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
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Wendell Berry is an American farmer, poet, novelist, essayist, and environmental activist. He is the first living writer inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. His homestead Lane’s Landing is in Henry County, Kentucky, on the Kentucky River in northeastern Kentucky near Port Royal. His f...
The Peace of Wild Things Annotated
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.
Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998