Paul Hamilton Hayne

Windless Rain

THE rain, the desolate rain!
Ceaseless, and solemn, and chill!
How it drips on the misty pane,
How it drenches the darkened sill!
O scene of sorrow and dearth!
I would that the wind awaking
To a fierce and gusty birth,
Might vary this dull refrain
Of the rain, the desolate rain:
For the heart of heaven seems breaking
In tears o'er the fallen earth,
And again, again, again
We list to the sombre strain,
The faint, cold monotone--
Whose soul is a mystic moan--
Of the rain, the mournful rain,
The soft, despairing rain!

The rain, the murmurous rain!
Weary, passionless, slow,
'Tis the rhythm of settled sorrow,
'Tis the sobbing of cureless woe!
And all the tragic of life,
The pathos of Long-Ago,
Comes back on the sad refrain
Of the rain, the dreary rain,
Till the graves in my heart unclose,
And the dead that its depths enfold,
From a solemn and weird repose
Awake,--but with eyelids cold,
And voices that melt in pain
On the tide of the plaintive rain,
The yearning, hopeless rain,
The long, low, whispering rain!