Good friend, be patient: goes the world awry? 
well, can you groove it straight with all your pains? 
and, sigh or scold, and, argue or intreat, 
what have you done but waste your part of life 
on impotent fool's battles with the winds, 
that will blow as they list in spite of you? 

Fie, I am weary of your pettish griefs 
against the world that's given, like a child 
who whines and pules because his bread's not cake, 
because the roses have those ugly thorns 
that prick if he's not careful of his hands. 
Oh foolish spite: what talk you of the world, 
and mean the men and women and the sin? 
Oh friend, these all pass by, and God remains: 
and God has made a world that pleases Him, 
and when He wills then He will better it; 
let it suffice us as he wills it now. 

Nay, hush and look and listen. For this noon, 
this summer noon, replies "but be content," 
speaking in voices of a hundred joys. 

For lo, we, lying on this mossy knoll, 
tasting the vivid musk of sheltering pines, 
and balm of odorous flowers and sweet warm air; 
feeling the uncadenced music of slow leaves, 
and ripples in the brook athwart its stones, 
and birds that call each other in the brakes 
with sudden questions and smooth long replies, 
the gossip of the incessant grasshoppers, 
and the contented hum of laden bees; 
we, knowing (with the easy restful eye 
that, whichsoever way it turns, is filled 
with unexacting beauty) this smooth sky, 
blue with our English placid silvery blue, 
mottled with little lazy clouds, this stretch 
of dappled wealds and green and saffron slopes, 
and near us these gnarled elm-trunks barred with gold, 
and ruddy pine-boles, where the slumbrous beams 
have slipped through the translucent leafy net 
to break the shimmering dimness of the wood; 
we, who, like licensed truants from light tasks 
which lightly can be banished out of mind, 
have all ourselves to give to idleness, 
were more unreasoning, if we make moan 
of miseries and toils and barrenness, 
than if we sitting at a feast told tales 
of famines and for the pity of them starved. 

Oh, life is good when, on such summer days, 
we linger in the dreamful paradise 
that lies at every door where so much space 
is left to garner in the languid air 
as grass may grow in and some verdurous tree, 
and some few yards of blueness and of clouds 
may stretch above, making immensity; 
when, lost out of our petty unit selves, 
the heart grows large in the grave trance of peace, 
and all things breathing, growing, are its kin, 
and all the fair and blossoming earth is home. 

And beauty is our lesson: for, look there, 
that exquisite curve and cluster of rich leaves, 
emerald and shadow, in that patch of sun, 
what is it but a nettle? And that knoll 
of woven green, where all fantastic grace 
of shaggy stems and lush and trailing shoots 
and all a thousand delicate varied tints, 
are mingled in a wanton symmetry, 
what is it but a thorn and bramble copse? 
And that far plain, on which, through all the day, 
change still grows lovelier and every cloud 
makes different softer dimness, every light 
an other-coloured glory, what is it? 
a desolate barren waste, marshland and moor. 
And in some other moment, when the rain 
spurts greyly downwards on the soddening fields, 
or the dank, autumn fog veils leaden skies, 
or the keen baleful east winds nip the bloom 
of frightened spring with bleak and parching chills, 
the waste, the thorns, the nettle, each would seem 
cursed with the unloveliness of evil things. 

So beauty comes and goes: yet beauty is 
a message out of Heaven; can it speak 
from evil things? I know not; but I know 
that waste and thorns and nettle are to-day 
teachers of Love, a prospect not to change, 
for use, against a fifty miles of corn. 
Can we tell good from evil you and I? 

Oh, if the men and women of to-day 
seem ill or good to us, why, what know we? 
to-morrow they, or those who follow them, 
will seem another way; and are they changed, 
or are the eyes that see them? Let them be; 
are we divine that we should judge and rule? 
And they are not the world by several selves 
but in a gathered whole, and if that whole 
drift heavenward or hellward God can see, 
not we, who, ants hived in our colonies, 
count the world loam or gravel, stocked with flowers 
or weeds or cabbages, as we shall find 
within our own small ranges, and (being wise 
and full of care for all the universe), 
wonder, and blame, and theorize, and plan, 
by the broad guide of our experiences! 

'Twere a neat world if levelled by the ants; 
no ridges, no rough gaps, all fined and soft. 
But I will rather use my antish wits 
in smoothing just my cell an