Patience Taught By Nature

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

And still the generations of the birds

Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds

Serenely live while we are keeping strife

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

Against which we may struggle ! Ocean girds

Unslackened the dry land, savannah-swards

Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife

Meek leaves drop year]y from the forest-trees

To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass

In their old glory: O thou God of old,

Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these ! —

But so much patience as a blade of grass

Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.