Patience Taught By Nature

1'O DREARY life,' we cry, ' O dreary life ! '

2And still the generations of the birds

3Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds

4Serenely live while we are keeping strife

5With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife

6Against which we may struggle ! Ocean girds

7Unslackened the dry land, savannah-swards

8Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife

9Meek leaves drop year]y from the forest-trees

10To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass

11In their old glory: O thou God of old,

12Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these ! —

13But so much patience as a blade of grass

14Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.