But this is only one example of the deliciousness of rain—one, you will say, picked, selected, exceptional. There are many other times at which it is beautiful. It is beautiful when it comes hurried and passionate, fleeing from the storm wind, hurled, like a volley of small musketry, against your streaming panes; and the few tarnished gold leaves of the beech-trees are struck down one after one by the bullets. It is beautiful in the Midsummer, when it comes in light, soft showers, or, more in earnest, accompanied with thunder-music, straight and heavy; when, as the poet says—
“Rolling as in sleep,
Low thunders bring the mellow rain.”
It is beautiful when it rains far away in the distance, the bright sun shining on the mound on which you stand, and only a few guerilla drops heralding the approach of the shower towards you. It is beautiful among leafless trees, in early Spring or late Autumn, under an avenue, or in a copse, when every long bough and black branch is glittering, strung with trembling diamonds; when, the force of the wind and rain being kept from you by the trees and underwood, the gentle sadness and quiet melancholy of the scene can be gathered into your heart. It is beautiful in a town, when you stand at the window, and watch the emptying streets; the gutters pour by in a yellow, twisted flood; the street becomes a river, and, as the sudden gust drives them before it,
“Skirmishing drops
Rush with bright bayonets across the road.”
The window is lined with rows of brilliants, that gradually grow bigger and bigger, and waver and fall, ever supplied by a constant succession of new comers, like the Scotch at Flodden,
“Each stepping where his comrade stood
The instant that he fell.”
And, since I have mostly spoken of the beauty of rain in the country, I will quote a description of its beauty in London:—
“A slight, quick, fervid shower—tears more of happiness brimming over than anger breaking its bounds—had just fallen, and pricked the dry grey pavement into a dark lace pattern of spots, out of which you could select the newest by their being sharper in outline and darker than the rest. The aristocracy of five minutes ago, and the parvenues of the last moment, alike, as the soft warm rain fell now quicker and more petulantly passionate, melting one into the other, losing shape, place, and purpose, as the stone washed luminous brown, and transparent as slabs of Cairngorm agate.”
Londoners caught in a shower will surely thank me for this extract, and recall the description while they admire the process.
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