There Will Come Soft Rains / Sara Teasdale

There Will Come Soft Rains

(For war time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), 1918
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

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

Sara Teasdale biography

"There Will Come Soft Rains" read & illustrated by Xulin Wang.