Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Rain in Summer is a celebration of wet weather. It is a call for people to stop complaining about the rain and instead to embrace it.
The first stanza reads:
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
Wadsworth Longfellow, who was an American poet and educator who lived from 1807 to 1882, had much to say about summer downpours. Here are a few notes on this excellent poem:
Rain should be welcomed!
The entire poem is basically a list of all the reasons we should be pleased when the heavens open. It breaks through the 'dust and heat', it calms and cools the sick, and it provides a fun playgound for children:
From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
Rain is inspirational!
Wadsworth Longfellow, as a poet, sees the heavy rain as inspirational - it helps him to see something hitherto invisible:
These, and far more than these,
The Poet sees!
He can behold
Aquarius old
Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold
Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere
The showery rain,
As the farmer scatters his grain.
