As with most of Wendell Berry's work, The Peace of Wild Things is focused on environmentalism: people learning to live and respect nature. In this particular piece the first person speaker already has a strong connection to nature and the poem takes the angle of exploring the restorative aspects of nature. Environmentalism here is from a very personal and relationship oriented perspective. Having been overwhelmed by the weight of the world the speaker is presented as very troubled: waking in the night with an existential crisis on hand he is distinctly in need of answers or comfort and one response could be to talk about these fears, this despair; or at least write them down – some way to deal with them directly. But instead the speaker immediately leaves his house to go out and be with nature and a simple response would be that he is looking for a distraction from these woes. The poem however does not reinforce this notion as the speaker goes to contemplate his existential crisis. In nature he remembers rest and sees that the “wild things” exist and are without need for the worry – the world continues without their worry. From, this the speaker finds refreshment, loosens the existential worries and is at peace. Nature is then, somehow, a place where he can revisit his soul, a reminder of how to be in the world, where the animals in their places can take him to his place – thereby alleviating the troubles he experiences.

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The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, 
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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