We’ll take the rain for without it there’s to be no lush green.
It’s damp out this way, very damp, beyond damp – in fact it’s very, very wet. Gutters are overflowing, the soil beneath the turf is fit to bursting. The all you can drink buffet the clouds have laid on looked enticing – but now please, no more – the brooks are broken, the streams are streaming, the rivers are raging – that tap needs fixing.
All the weathers have their attributes, the right amount of each is just about right – we’ll take the cold so we can appreciate the warm (and the respite afforded by the reverse is often welcome); we’ll take the rain for without it there’s to be no lush green; peeling off the winter layers is one of the great joys of spring – a weather in balance needs to be cherished and preserved – but please stop this rain!
Edward Thomas, best known for his 1915 poem ‘Adlestrop’, could be considered one of the ‘war poets’. He penned ‘Rain’ whilst in the trenches of northern France during The Great War. His use of rain highlights the misery, and the likely outcome, of his circumstances, and yet he sees a positive in the cleansing process of the downpours – small joys amongst the mass of horror. He was killed in action during the Battle of Arras the following year.
Rain by Edward Thomas
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
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