“AN UNUSUAL RAIN.”
Again!
Another day of rain!
It has rained for years.
It never clears.
The clouds come down so low
They drag and drip
Across each hill-top’s tip.
In progress slow
They blow in from the sea
Eternally;
Hang heavily and black,
And then roll back;
And rain and rain and rain,
Both drifting in and drifting out again.
They come down to the ground,
These clouds, where the ground is high;
And, lest the weather fiend forget
And leave one hidden spot unwet,
The fog comes up to the sky!
And all our pavement of planks and logs
Reeks with the rain and steeps in the fogs
Till the water rises and sinks and presses
Into your bonnets and shoes and dresses;
And every outdoor-going dunce
Is wet in forty ways at once.
Wet?
It’s wetter than being drowned.
Dark?
Such darkness never was found
Since first the light was made. And cold?
O come to the land of grapes and gold,
Of fruit and flowers and sunshine gay,
When the rainy season’s under way!
And they tell you calmly, evermore,
They never had such rain before!
What’s that you say? Come out?
Why, see that sky!
Oh, what a world! so clear! so high!
So clean and lovely all about;
The sunlight burning through and through,
And everything just blazing blue.
And look! the whole world blossoms again
The minute the sunshine follows the rain.
Warm sky—earth basking under—
Did it ever rain, I wonder?