Rain

Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying to-night or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be towards what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

A soldier awake in a hut at midnight, listening to the rain and thinking of the dead and the dying. He loves nothing now, he says, except the love of death, and even that he doubts.

Source: Edward Thomas, Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1917), published under the name Edward Eastaway. Written 1916 in an army camp. Text: Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the US.

Public domain in the United States.