Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. <br />Let us discover some new alphabet, <br />For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, <br />The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, <br />The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, <br />And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,— <br />Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, <br />Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done. <br />There is an oriole who, upside down, <br />Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,— <br />Under a tree as dead and still as lead; <br />There is a single leaf, in all this heaven <br />Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig: <br />The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught <br />Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs; <br />There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom <br />Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud. <br />The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly <br />Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock <br />Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail <br />Surveys the wet world from a watery stone... <br />And still the syllables of water whisper: <br />The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait <br />In the dark room; and in your heart I find <br />One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,— <br />Orion in a cobweb, and the World.<br /><br />Conrad Potter Aiken<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/beloved-let-us-once-more-praise-the-rain/
