Poetry Tuesday: Rain

The rain began late last night. It promises to continue through tomorrow with the possibility of turning to snow. Since it’s time for another “Poetry Tuesday” post, I searched for one about rain. I enjoyed thinking about the voice and song and purpose of the rain in this poem by Walt Whitman.

The Voice of the Rain

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,

Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:

I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,

Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,

Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and yet the same,

I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,

And all that in them without  me were seeds only, latent, unborn;

And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it;

(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,

Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)