When despair for the world grows in me - and I wake in the night at the least sound,
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, 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