A Summer Shower / Henry Timrod

A Summer Shower

       Welcome, rain or tempest
          From yon airy powers.
       We have languished for them
          Many sultry hours,
And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her flowers.

       What have they been doing
          In the burning June?
       Siding with the genii?
          Visiting the moon?
Or sleeping on the ice amid an arctic noon?

       Bring they with them jewels
          From the sunset lands?
       What are these they scatter
          With such lavish hands?
There are no brighter gems in Raolconda's sands.

       Pattering on the gravel,
          Dropping from the eaves,
       Glancing in the grass, and
          Tinkling on the leaves,
They flash the liquid pearls as flung from fairy sieves.

       Meanwhile, unreluctant,
          Earth like Danae lies;
       Listen! is it fancy,
          That beneath us sighs,
As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies?

       Jove, it is, descendeth
          In those crystal rills;
       And this world-wide tremor
          Is a pulse that thrills
To a god's life infused through veins of velvet hills.

       Wait, thou jealous sunshine,
          Break not on their bliss;
       Earth will blush in roses
          Many a day for this.
And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss.

~~
Henry Timrod (1828-1867)
from The Poems of Henry Timrod, 1873

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

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