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A RAINY DAY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: All day, against the window pane
Last Line: For days clear shining after rain.
Alternate Author Name(s): Van Deth, Gerrit, Mrs.
Subject(s): Death - Children; Grief; Mothers; Pain; Tears; Death - Babies; Sorrow; Sadness; Suffering; Misery


ALL day, against the window pane,
The fitful dashing of the rain
Keeps up in dreary monotone
A minor music of its own,—
A weary moan of restless pain,
This chorded anthem of the rain.

My tired heart within me hears,
Too tired to-day for easeful tears,
And well interprets every sound
From sobbing sky and barren ground.
Like one who from the organ-keys,
Awakens threaded harmonies,
To fit in pauses of the strain
Another sings, I list the rain,
And try, through woven words of mine,
Its cadenced melody to twine.

All day it falls on little beds
That pillow softly baby heads,
From mother's tender nursing gone,
While yet her life was in its dawn.
Alas, how many a mother feels
The coldness of each drop that steals
Through that green coverlet that lies
Between her darling and her eyes!

All day it shuts the cheerful sun
From many a longing, lonely one.
No sparkling rift of heaven's blue
Breaks regnant all its mystery through;
No golden radiance cleaves a way
Through close-set banks of vapor gray,
Slow-beating on the darkened pane
All day, the sleet, the storm, the rain!

Yet think, impatient soul of mine,
That somewhere still the sun must shine,
That somewhere other hearts are glad,
And days are not forlorn and sad,
And that God's benedictions still
Fall from stern lips of seeming ill.

In memory's light these drops may be
Like glittering amethysts to thee,
And all thy being yet may bless
His patient care and tenderness,
Who bids thee trust Him, not in vain,
For days clear shining after rain.





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