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.)
Whitman is more sophisticated than me. I was thinking more along the lines of “Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day.”
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