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 yeary 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.

-Elizabeth Barret Browning