That sputter of rain, flipping the hedge-rows
And making the highways hiss.
How I love it !
And the touch of you upon my arm
As you press against me that my umbrella
May cover you.
Tinkle of drops on stretched silk.
Wet murmur through green branches.
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book ;
And the South Wind, washing through the room,
Makes the candles quiver.
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter.
And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots
Outside, in the night.
Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love ?
The rain is dark against the white sky.
Or white against the foliage of eucalyptus-trees.
But, in the cistern, it is a sheet of mauve and amber.
Because of the chrysanthemums
Heaped about its edge.
Is it the tinkling of mandolins which disturbs you ?
Or the dropping of bitter-orange petals among the coffee-cups ?
Or the slow creeping of the moonlight between the olive-trees ?
Drop ! drop ! the rain
Upon the thin plates of my heart.
String your blood to chord with this music,
Stir your heels upon the cobbles to the rhythm of a dance-tune.
They have slim thighs and arms of silver ;
The moon washes away their garments ;
They make a pattern of fleeing feet in the branch shadows.
And the green grapes knotted about them
Burst as they press against one another.
The rain knocks upon the plates of my heart.
They are crumpled with its beating.
Would you drink only from your brains, Old Man ?
The vine leaves against the brick walls of my house
Are rusty and broken.
Dead leaves gather under the pine-trees,
The brittle boughs of lilac-bushes
Sweep against the stars.
And I sit under a lamp
Trying to write down the emptiness of my heart.
Even the cat will not stay with me,
But prefers the rain
Under the meagre shelter of a cellar window.
I do not know which is worse when you are away:
Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain
And then when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall
The thought that perhaps you may never come back again ;
Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,
Sparkling newly all in the dear spring weather,
When with a heart that is torn apart by pain
I walk alone in ways that we went together.
A broken ploughed field
In the driving rain,
Rain driven slant-wise
Over the plain.
I long for the rain.
The dull long rain.
For farmlands and ploughlands
And cornlands again.
O grey broken skies.
You were part of my pain !
The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain --
They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart, they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees.
What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the rush of the wild sunrise?
Ever the rain -- the rain and the wind!
Come, hunch with me over the fire,
Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned,
Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned,
And the death came on desire!
The gentleness of rain was in the wind.
The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.
WHEN the sun comes after rain
And the bird is in the blue,
The girls go down the lane
Two by two.
When the sun comes after shadow
And the singing of the showers,
The girls go up the meadow,
Fair as flowers.
When the eve comes dusky red
And the moon succeeds the sun,
The girls go home to bed
One by one.
And when life draws to its even
And the day of man is past,
They shall all go home to heaven,
Home at last.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more--
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.