After Summer Rain / David Morton

After Summer Rain

All day the rain has filled the apple-trees,
     And stilled the orchard grasses of their mirth,
Turning these acres green and silvered seas
     That drowned the summer musics of the earth.
Now that this clearer twilight takes the hill,
     This thin, belated radiance, moving by,
Bird-calls return, and odours, rainy still,
     And colours glinting through the earth and sky.

Here where I watch the robins from the lane,
     That pirouette and preen among the leaves,
These swift, wet-winged arrivals in the rain
     Have spilled a wisdom from their dripping eaves,—
And beauty still is more than daily bread,
For fevered minds, and hearts discomforted.

~~
David Morton (1886-1957)
from Ships in Harbour, and other poems, 1921

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

David Morton biography