At the time at which I am writing, a soft shower has just fallen. For months we have had scarcely any rain. Even the massed primrose roots in the hedges, with the last few stragglings of their Easter decorations here and there about them, have drooped their long broad leaves. The grass and the trees have seemed to remain at a standstill, as though waiting for something. The plough-land has stood in great unbroken lumps. The marsh-land has gaped open in huge cracks. The ponds have sunk a foot below their usual mark; the ditches give no savoury smell from their shallow green soup. The roads are like grindstones, wearing down your shoe-leather with myriad-pointed flint-powder, and your patience with loose stones that carry your legs away from your control and supervision. The roofs want washing, the148 drains want flooding, the butts want filling. When I pour waterpot after waterpot of water about the roots of some favourite or needy plant, the water runs off the caked ground as though it were a duck’s back; or, the mould being loosened, is sucked in, without the chance of collecting into a pool, and, seemingly, without quenching the fever-thirst of the earth.
All things and all people want rain: the farmers for their land, the cottager for his garden—a steady three or four hours’ downpour, not only such a slight shower as this, that, scarce having browned the beds, is already drying off from them.
Just now, it is certain, rain would be appreciated, but still even now more for its usefulness, than for its beauty. For the beauty of rain is a thing often missed, I think, even by those who do keep, as they pass through this world, a keen eye for the Creator’s thoughts, embodied in beauty about them: poems written on the world’s open page by the Hand of the great Poet, or Maker. For, rightly regarded, from the vast epic of the starry heavens, to the simple pastoral of a dewdrop, or the lyric a bird, God’s works are to us the expression of His mind, the language which conveys to us His ideas. Man’s noblest descriptive poetry—what is it but a weak endeavour to interpret to less gifted seers the beautiful thoughts of God?
And rain is one of these thoughts—a realised idea of the mind of the Almighty. And since I find, both in men and in books, a general neglect, if not a rooted dislike, with regard to rain—as such, and putting out of sight its usefulness—I shall devote a few pages to the endeavour to set forth the beauty of this thought of God.
149
Even Tennyson, nature-loving Tennyson, what word has he for the rain? Of Enid we are told—
“She did not weep, But o’er her meek eyes came a happy mist, Like that which kept the heart of Eden green Before the useful trouble of the rain.”
150 Nothing, then, even in the desire to praise it, better than “useful trouble”? I do not think that even Wordsworth dwells with much frequency or delight on this friend of mine. Longfellow has—
“The day is cold, and dark, and dreary, It rains, and the wind is never weary.”
One who sent out, some years ago, a volume of unfulfilled promise, writes—
“How beautiful the yesterday that stood Over me like a rainbow! I am alone, The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.”
And so on, generally; all that is dreary, uninviting, dismal, seems connected in the English mind with rain. In the English mind, I say, for I suppose the want of appreciation of it arises from its somewhat abundance in our climate. But how differently is it regarded by the poets of an Eastern land! How beautiful the description—
“Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it; Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: Thou preparest them corn, when Thou hast so provided for it: Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: Thou settlest the furrows thereof: Thou makest it soft with showers: Thou blessest the springing thereof.”
How lovingly it is spoken of! That “gracious rain upon Thine inheritance,” refreshing it when it was weary; the “rain upon the mown grass, and showers that water the earth.” How its mention is a signal for thanksgiving—“Sing unto the151 Lord, who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth.”
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To be rightly appreciated in our climate, rain should certainly come after a drought. Most people, no doubt, then appreciate it, because of its watering the crops, or laying the dust. But the true lover of rain regards it not merely or chiefly in this utilitarian matter-of-fact aspect. He has a deep inner enjoyment of the rain, as rain, and his sense of its beauty drinks it in as thirstily as does the drinking earth. It refreshes and cools his heart and brain; he longs to go forth into the fields, to feel its steady stream, to scent its fragrance; to stand under some heavy-foliaged chestnut-tree, and hear the rushing music on the crowded leaves. Let the drought have continued two months; let the glass have been, at last, steadily falling for a day or two; let, at last, a delicious mellow gloom have overspread the hot glaring heavens; let it have brooded all day, with a constant momently yet lingering promise of rain. The cattle stand about with a sort of pleasing dreamy anticipation; they know rain is coming, and no more muddy shallow ponds, and dry choking herbage for them. The birds expect it, and chirp and nestle in the foliage, important, excited, joyful. Or some one thrush or blackbird, amid the chirping hush of the others, constitutes himself the loud spokesman of their joy. So Keble—
“Deep is the silence as of summer noon, When a soft shower Will trickle soon, A gracious rain, freshening the weary bower— Oh sweetly then far off is heard The clear note of some lonely bird.”
152 And at last it comes. You hear a patter here and there; you see a leaf here and there bob and blink about you; you feel a spot on your face, on your hand. And then the gracious rain comes, gathering its forces—steady, close, abundant. Lean out of window, and watch, and listen. How delicious! The gradually-browning beds; the verandah beneath losing its scattered spots in a sheet of luminous wet; and, never pausing, the close, heavy, soft-rushing noise; the patter from the eaves, the
“Two-fold sound, The clash hard by, and the murmur all round.”
The crisp drenching rustle from the dry foliage of the perceptibly grateful trees, broad pavilions for ever-chirping birds; the little plants, in speechless ecstasy, receiving cupful after cupful into the outspread leaves, that silently empty their gracious load, time after time, into the still expecting roots, and open their hands still for more. You can hardly leave the window. You come again at night; you have heard that ceaseless pour on the roof, on the skylight, and the loud clashing under the eaves, in the silence, as you went up late to bed. You open the window and let the mild cool air in, and look through the darkness, and listen, for you cannot see. On the vine-leaves about the casement is the steady
“Sound of falling rain; A bird, awakened in its nest, Gives a faint twitter of unrest, Then smooths its plumes, and sleeps again.”
Your light shines out into the deep dark, and touches the trees just about the house, and gives a dull gleam to some portion of153 the streaming lines. Unwillingly you shut the window, and hear still, as you kneel and there is silence, the rushing undertone. Or, if a cool breeze arise, sudden bursts of rattling drops come impetuously against the panes, with intervals of dreamy rustling, or in quick succession. You like to hear that sound as you lie in bed, for you think of the bedding plants that you have just put out, or of the burnt patches in the lawn, or of the turnip and onion seed; or, with a larger sympathy, you think of the great thirsty fields of corn, yellowing for want of rain; of the mill-stream, so long shallow and inadequate; of the wells in the cottage-gardens about you, and their turbid or exhausted condition. You look forward, ere you lose consciousness, to how next day all vegetation will have advanced and appear refreshed.
And next morning you look out from your window, as you dress, with a deep sense of luxurious enjoyment. The rain has continued steadily all night, until six in the morning. But it has ceased now, though the warm tender gloom still continues, and only just veils the bright sun, which now and then breaks through it. As you contemplate the scene from the open window, the refreshed look of the rich brown road, that was so white and dusty, makes you long to sally forth upon it. Tearful puddles smile here and there on the walks; the drenched grass twinkles and sparkles, and reminds you of that exquisite description of “the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” And, breakfast over, you walk out, through the garden gate, a little way into the road. There is a peculiar, as it were, growing warmth in the air. Everything seems to have attained a week’s growth154 in the one night. You remark the vivid gold-green patches in the hedges. The lime-trees—indeed, all the trees—make a most effective background with their black wet stems and branches for the radiant emer............