The Voice of the Rain

And who art thou ? said I to the soft-falling shower,Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated :I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and yet the same,I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn ;And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it ;(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)