Page 18 - Poetry-Country

The Rainy Day

Blest drizzle that keeps prudent people
Shut tight in-doors,
And blots the town roofs and the steeple,
And builded shores,
Wipes out all bounds and limitations,
And leaves but vaguest intimations
Of his or thine! My old vexations
Depart by scores;
Abstract, I am, without relations,
Whene’er it pours.

What are to me the wretched changes
Of human life?
Here, hemmed by mists, my being’s range is
All closed to strife.
Despair may tackle me tomorrow,
And I may share the whole world’s sorrow,
Or others woe from me may borrow,
But not to-day,
The sphere I walk in is too narrow
To breed dismay.

The woods and fields I roam about in,
Wet as an eel,
At every step the water spouting
From toe and heel,
The traveling seeds of weeds and grasses
I furnish gayly with free passes,
They board me singly and in masses,
By hook and crook,
And, being of the clinging classes,
Cannot be shook.

But night comes on; I'm stiff and weary,
The storm grows rude,
The landscape all is wild and dreary,
And so’s my mood;
The task assigned by the Creator
To me, as weed-disseminator,

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