How it clatters along roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
WHAT BECOMES OF THE RAIN?
The clouds that sail overhead are made of watery vapour. Sometimes they look like great masses of cotton-wool against the intense blue of the sky. Sometimes they are set like fleecy plumes high above the earth. Sometimes they hang like a sullen blanket of gray smoke, so low they almost touch the roofs of the houses. Indeed, they often rest on the ground and then we walk through a dense fog.
In their various forms, clouds are like wet sponges, and when they are wrung dry they disappear—all their moisture falls upon the earth. When the air is warm, the water comes in the form of rain. If it is cold, the drops are frozen into hail, sleet, or snow.
All of the water in the oceans, in the lakes and rivers, great and small, all over the earth, comes from one source, the clouds. In the course of a year enough rain and snow fall to cover the entire surface of the globe to a depth of forty inches. This quantity of water amounts to 34,480 barrels on every acre. What becomes of it all?
We can easily understand that all the seas and the other bodies of water would simply add forty inches to their depth, and many would become larger, because the water would creep up on their gradually sloping shores. We have to account for the rain and the snow that fall upon the dry land and disappear.