E knew it would rain, for all the morn <br />A spirit on slender ropes of mist <br />Was lowering its golden buckets down <br />Into the vapory amethyst. <br />Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-- <br />Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, <br />Dipping the jewels out of the sea, <br />To sprinkle them over the land in showers. <br />We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed <br />The white of their leaves, the amber grain <br />Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now <br />Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!<br /><br />Thomas Bailey Aldrich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/before-the-rain/
