![]() And speaking of love of death, the next poem on this list also embraces this subject …Īll day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors Like many of Edward Thomas’s poems, ‘Rain’ has a simple setting: the speaker, sheltering from the rain alone in a hut, muses upon his loved ones miles away and on death and the ‘love of death’. Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rainĪnd neither hear the rain nor give it thanksīlessed are the dead that the rain rains upon … Hardy’s use of the refrain ‘the years O!’ calls to mind not only the passing of time but also the years marked on those gravestones, alongside the names: ‘Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.’Įdward Thomas’s poem ‘Rain’ was written in 1916, while Thomas was fighting in the trenches: Emma, like her parents, is now in that ‘high new house’ of heaven, and all that remains of her is the name on her gravestone and Hardy’s memories of her. ![]() The poem sees Hardy recalling his first wife Emma’s childhood life in Devon with her family. This poem is structured like a song, with a repeated refrain at the beginning and end of each verse or stanza. ![]() ![]() How the sick leaves reel down in throngs … The rain really does ‘help’ the brook by allowing evaporated water to fall back into it and rejoin the rivers and streams, just as those rivers and streams flow into the sea to ‘help’ maintain that part of the Earth’s water system. Her personification of the summer shower may border on the twee, but what saves it from sentimentality is the fact that we often use such language in everyday speech when describing the ecosystem and the cycles inherent in the natural world. So begins this wonderfully evocative poem describing the coming of rain to the dry summer land, with some arresting and unusual metaphors for the raindrops – as you’d expect from a Dickinson poem. ![]()
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