THE rain, the desolate rain! Ceaseless, and solemn, and chill! How it drips on the misty pane, How it drenches the darkened sill! O scene of sorrow and dearth! I would that the wind awaking To a fierce and gusty birth, Might vary this dull refrain Of the rain, the desolate rain: For the heart of heaven seems breaking In tears o'er the fallen earth, And again, again, again We list to the sombre strain, The faint, cold monotone -- Whose soul is a mystic moan -- Of the rain, the mournful rain, The soft, despairing rain! The rain, the murmurous rain! Weary, passionless, slow, 'Tis the rhythm of settled sorrow, 'Tis the sobbing of cureless woe! And all the tragic of life, The pathos of Long-Ago, Comes back on the sad refrain Of the rain, the dreary rain, Till the graves in my heart unclose, And the dead that its depths enfold, From a solemn and weird repose A wake, -- but with eyelids cold, And voices that melt in pain On the tide of the plaintive rain, The yearning, hopeless rain, The long, low, whispering rain! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR by MARIANNE MOORE THE WAKING YEAR by EMILY DICKINSON THE HILL WIFE: THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM by ROBERT FROST HIS PRAYER FOR ABSOLUTION by ROBERT HERRICK ROUGE BOUQUET [MARCH 7, 1918] by ALFRED JOYCE KILMER THE PLUMPUPPETS by CHRISTOPHER DARLINGTON MORLEY |