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To be rightly appreciated in our climate, rain should certainly come after a drought. Most people, no doubt, then appreciate it, because of its watering the crops, or laying the dust. But the true lover of rain regards it not merely or chiefly in this utilitarian matter-of-fact aspect. He has a deep inner enjoyment of the rain, as rain, and his sense of its beauty drinks it in as thirstily as does the drinking earth. It refreshes and cools his heart and brain; he longs to go forth into the fields, to feel its steady stream, to scent its fragrance; to stand under some heavy-foliaged chestnut-tree, and hear the rushing music on the crowded leaves. Let the drought have continued two months; let the glass have been, at last, steadily falling for a day or two; let, at last, a delicious mellow gloom have overspread the hot glaring heavens; let it have brooded all day, with a constant momently yet lingering promise of rain. The cattle stand about with a sort of pleasing dreamy anticipation; they know rain is coming, and no more muddy shallow ponds, and dry choking herbage for them. The birds expect it, and chirp and nestle in the foliage, important, excited, joyful. Or some one thrush or blackbird, amid the chirping hush of the others, constitutes himself the loud spokesman of their joy. So Keble—
“Deep is the silence as of summer noon,
When a soft shower
Will trickle soon,
A gracious rain, freshening the weary bower—
Oh sweetly then far off is heard
The clear note of some lonely bird.”
And at last it comes. You hear a patter here and there; you see a leaf here and there bob and blink about you; you feel a spot on your face, on your hand. And then the gracious rain comes, gathering its forces—steady, close, abundant. Lean out of window, and watch, and listen. How delicious! The gradually-browning beds; the verandah beneath losing its scattered spots in a sheet of luminous wet; and, never pausing, the close, heavy, soft-rushing noise; the patter from the eaves, the
“Two-fold sound,
The clash hard by, and the murmur all round.”
The crisp drenching rustle from the dry foliage of the perceptibly grateful trees, broad pavilions for ever-chirping birds; the little plants, in speechless ecstasy, receiving cupful after cupful into the outspread leaves, that silently empty their gracious load, time after time, into the still expecting roots, and open their hands still for more. You can hardly leave the window. You come again at night; you have heard that ceaseless pour on the roof, on the skylight, and the loud clashing under the eaves, in the silence, as you went up late to bed. You open the window and let the mild cool air in, and look through the darkness, and listen, for you cannot see. On the vine-leaves about the casement is the steady
“Sound of falling rain;
A bird, awakened in its nest,
Gives a faint twitter of unrest,
Then smooths its plumes, and sleeps again.”
Your light shines out into the deep dark, and touches the trees just about the house, and gives a dull gleam to some portion of the streaming lines. Unwillingly you shut the window, and hear still, as you kneel and there is silence, the rushing undertone. Or, if a cool breeze arise, sudden bursts of rattling drops come impetuously against the panes, with intervals of dreamy rustling, or in quick succession. You like to hear that sound as you lie in bed, for you think of the bedding plants that you have just put out, or of the burnt patches in the lawn, or of the turnip and onion seed; or, with a larger sympathy, you think of the great thirsty fields of corn, yellowing for want of rain; of the mill-stream, so long shallow and inadequate; of the wells in the cottage-gardens about you, and their turbid or exhausted condition. You look forward, ere you lose consciousness, to how next day all vegetation will have advanced and appear refreshed.
And next morning you look out from your window, as you dress, with a deep sense of luxurious enjoyment. The rain has continued steadily all night, until six in the morning. But it has ceased now, though the warm tender gloom still continues, and only just veils the bright sun, which now and then breaks through it. As you contemplate the scene from the open window, the refreshed look of the rich brown road, that was so white and dusty, makes you long to sally forth upon it. Tearful puddles smile here and there on the walks; the drenched grass twinkles and sparkles, and reminds you of that exquisite description of “the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” And, breakfast over, you walk out, through the garden gate, a little way into the road. There is a peculiar, as it were, growing warmth in the air. Everything seems to have attained a week’s growth in the one night. You remark the vivid gold-green patches in the hedges. The lime-trees—indeed, all the trees—make a most effective background with their black wet stems and branches for the radiant emeralds that have burst their pink caskets all over them. The corn-blades, the hedge-banks, the drooping boughs, have all a drenched, tearfully-grateful look.
You pass, well pleased, back into the garden again. How well the peas show in the dark mould, and how much taller are they than they were yesterday! The dull green of the potatoes, that appeared but here and there last time you looked, seems now to cover the beds. The little crumpled flowers of the currant and gooseberry bushes have developed all over them into many blossom-laden strings. In the flower-beds the annuals appear above the round sanded patches; and of the bedding plants, no geranium, heliotrope, or verbena droops a leaf. You go back into the house refreshed by the beauty of the rain, as much as vegetation has been by the rain itself. The worst of such a day is, that it makes you feel idle, indisposed to settle down to work, inclined from time to time to saunter out and watch nature chewing the cud of its late refreshment.