Rain

Ebenezer Jones (1820–1860)

MORE than the wind, more than the snow,

More than the sunshine, I love rain:

Whether it droppeth soft and low,

Whether it rusheth amain.

Dark as the night it spreadeth its wings,

Slow and silently, up on the hills;

Then sweeps o’er the vale, like a steed that springs

From the grasp of a thousand wills.

Swift sweeps under heaven the raven’s flight;

And the land and the lakes and the main

Lie belted beneath with steel-bright light,

The light of the swift-rushing rain.

On evenings of summer, when sunlight is low,

Soft the rain falls from opal-hued skies:

And the flowers the most delicate summer can show

Are not stirred by its gentle surprise.

It falls on the pools, and no wrinkling it makes,

But touching melts in, like the smile

That sinks in the face of a dreamer, but breaks

Not the calm of his dream’s happy wile.

The grass rises up as it falls on the meads,

The bird softlier sings in his bower,

And the circles of gnats circle on like winged seeds

Through the soft sunny lines of the shower.