Patience Taught By Nature

Patience Taught By Nature

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

'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 yearly 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.

I have heard much moaning about cold, snow, and ice and I am sometimes guilty as well.  But, no matter how much we moan and groan, "the generations of the birds" still come and go.  Trees grow new leaves and drop them.  New growth, old growth, no growth the seasons turn and turn again, yet often we keep up the old cry of "O dreary life!"  Nature is a patience maker.