Summer Rain / John Davidson

Summer Rain

The flowers with dust disgraced
     Droop in garth and plain;
But the summer tempests haste
     With lustral rain.

The banded vapour rolls,
     Shadowing hill and town;
Anon the thunder tolls,
     The showers come down.

Margents where the salt winds pass,
     The freshened sea-pinks fret;
The roses change to hippocras
     The heaven's pearly sweat;

And the flowers all shine and all the grass
     Like jewels newly set,
Sapphire bright and chrysolite,
     And emeralds dripping wet.

Like smoke from a happy hearth,
     Out of the meads and the bowers.
The spicy dust of the moistened earth
     And the rainy scent of the flowers
Translate to silence sweet the mirth
     Of the silvery ringing showers.

~~

John Davidson (1857-1909)
from The Last Ballad, and other poems, 1899

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Davidson biography