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The winds of March had ceased to blow
Across the barren land
The earth was rugged brown and hard
Like an aged work worn hand.
Then suddenly a shower of rain
So clear and fresh and sweet
Fell softly, softly on the land
And glistened at my feet.
Then the sun appeared again
In a clear and cloudless sky
And what a transformation
So pleasing to the eye.
You'd think an artist with his brush
Had touched each vale and hill
And painted every tree and hedge
And every daffodil.
So fresh and green the earth was now
Tho dull the previous hour
And what had caused this wondrous change
Why, just an April shower.
Rain
Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw
nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring
died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned
its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow
of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and
bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.
- Peter Mayle
Have you watched the fairies when the rain is done,
Spreading out their little wings to dry them in the sun?
- Rose Fyleman
In the spring rain,
The pond and the river
Have become one.
- Buson
Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated
by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'.
- Michael McClary
Rain does not fall on one roof alone.
- Proverb from Cameroon
You open, land,
your mouth full of water,
your body gushes sky,
you burst, land,
your seeds explode,
the word grows green
- Octavio Paz, Blanco, 1966
I am an optimist,
but I'm an optimist who carries a raincoat.
- Harold Wilson
For keenest enjoyment, I visit when the dew is on them,
or in cloudy weather, or when the rain is falling:
and I must be alone or with someone who cares for them as I do. - David Fairchild
Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.
- Henry Ward Beecher
God's Warrior
It ain't no use to grumble and complain;
It's jest as cheap and easy to rejoice;
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
Why, rain's my choice.
- James Whitcomb Riley, Rain, 1849 - 1916
The good rain, like the bad preacher, does not know when to leave off. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't empty the water jar until the rain falls.
- Philippine proverb
Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth;
without rain, there would be no life.
- John Updike
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rain in Summer
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud, 1792 - 1822
God made rainy days, so gardeners could get the housework done.- Author Unknown
The rain is plentious but, by God's decree,
Only a third is meant for you and me;
Two-thirds are taken by the growing things
Or vanish Heavenward on vapour's wings:
Nor does it mathematically fall
With social equity on one and all.
The population's habit is to grow
In every region where the water's low:
Nature is blamed for failings that are Man's,
And well-run rivers have to change their plans.
- Sir Alan Herbert, Water
Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication,
and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to
a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
- Author Unknown
Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw
nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring
died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned
its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow
of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and
bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.
- Peter Mayle
Have you watched the fairies when the rain is done,
Spreading out their little wings to dry them in the sun?
- Rose Fyleman
In the spring rain,
The pond and the river
Have become one.
- Buson
Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated
by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'.
- Michael McClary
Rain does not fall on one roof alone.
- Proverb from Cameroon
You open, land,
your mouth full of water,
your body gushes sky,
you burst, land,
your seeds explode,
the word grows green
- Octavio Paz, Blanco, 1966
I am an optimist,
but I'm an optimist who carries a raincoat.
- Harold Wilson
For keenest enjoyment, I visit when the dew is on them,
or in cloudy weather, or when the rain is falling:
and I must be alone or with someone who cares for them as I do. - David Fairchild
God's Warrior
The Rain
The Rain
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sellp-song on our roof at night--
And I love the rain.
- Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, April Rain Song
God's Warrior
April Rain
April Showers
Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers.
- Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, 1557
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sellp-song on our roof at night--
And I love the rain.
- Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, April Rain Song
The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shawl and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.
- Mathilde Blind, April Rain
God's Warrior
Before the Rain
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1906)
We knew it would rain, for all the morn
A spirit on slender ropes of mist
Was lowering its golden buckets down
Into the vapory amethyst.
Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens--
Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,
To sprinkle them over the land in showers.
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!
