There Will Come Soft Rains

[osprey_archer]

I first found this poem in high school, and loved it so much then that I committed it to memory; and then lost it again, as happens. But we met again today, so I am sharing; for all that it's a springtime poem, it's peculiarly suited to autumn, too.

(My advisor commented today that I seemed strangely attuned to the season. He meant only that I was getting an apple cider, but I like to think it's true in a larger sense, too.)

There Will Come Soft Rains
(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
and swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

and frogs in the pools singing at night,
and wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

robins will wear their feathery fire
whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

and not one will know of the war, not one
will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
if mankind perished utterly;

and Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
would scarcely know that we were gone.

-Sara Teasdale