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 with their light For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free