How beautiful is the rain!
In the broad and fiery street,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
Breath of each little pool;
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighboring school
With more than their wonted noise
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling
In the country, on every side,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
More than man's spoken word.
From under the sheltering trees,
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
To the numberless beating drops
Only his own thrift and gain.
These, and far more than these,
Walking the fenceless fields of air;
Of the clouds about him rolled
As the farmer scatters his grain.
That have not yet been wholly told,--
Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought, that never stops,
Down to the graves of the dead,
Down through chasms and gulfs profound,
To the dreary fountain-head
Of lakes and rivers under ground;
And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colors seven
Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.
Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things, unseen before,
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
In the rapid and rushing river of Time
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
