Rain-in-the-Face

“ I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. ”

“ The sun may be shining brightly, when suddenly the sky is overcast, and the rain descends in torrents, to be succeeded by sunshine. If two cloudy or rainy days come consecutively, the people find themselves quite aggrieved, and complain of the awful weather. ”

“ The grumbling rain in a foamy gray tide
From the rusty roof-spouts is welling.
Now, weather-cock, turn in the wind and hark
What the rain-spouts sing as the day grows dark.—
"Hoohoo!" comes his crow out-swelling. ”

“ Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the ministration of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that the husbandman is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet unclaimed in the arms of the rainy wind. ”

“ Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the rain without—wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter world sodden with the sky’s incessant weeping.
She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her hair.
“He is out there in the sunshine,” she thought; “and I’m here in the dark and the rain alone. It is easy to forget when the sun shines always.” ”

“ No use for any girl to tell herself that this was the wind howling—or the rain dejectedly descending on a tin roof—for no wind ever howled so precisely up and down scales with such sobbingly human and barnyard notes, and no rain was ever known to be so surprisingly vocal, nor so loud and threatening one moment and so tremulously broken and far away the next. ”

“ For the most part the rains are heavy but not prolonged; they come in a steady, business-like downpour, or in sharp, angry squalls; suddenly the rain ceases, the clouds break, and the sun is shining from a blue sky. ”

“ Years have I known when, for months at a time, no drop of rain has fallen, when, like the people of old, we watched the sky in the ardent hope that the cloud as large as a man's hand would spread and burst into the showerso sorely needed—but the cloud passed and gave not the rain it promised ”

“ I could not go abroad in snow—it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man—a bubble. And fog—I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. ”

“ One of those soft, long-continued summer rains which pour down from morning to night without any hope of change, refreshing and restoring everything that had begun to droop in the too fervid sun, but shutting the doors of the house against the all-pervading moisture, and making all rambles impossible. Few things are more depressing to a heart already deeply weighted than this persistent rain. ”

“ The sea-sent mists wrap the mountains and even the lough itself in their vapory shroud. The cold thin rain falls unceasingly; a cheerless, damp, and heavy atmosphere dwells even within doors; and the gray half light gives a shadowy indistinctness even to objects at hand, disposing the mind to sad and dreary imaginings. ”

“ The rain began to fall in sheets, and the wind nearly blew me over, but who could run away from such fishing? The surface of the river, deep blue-gray, seemed rising everywhere in little jets to meet the rain. Rapids, eddies, still waters, weedy edges, all looked alike; there were neither waves nor swirls nor glassy slicks, but all were roughly furry under the multitudinous [pg 151] assaults of the fierce rain-drops. The sky was mottled lead-color, the wind blew less strongly, but cold—cold. ”

“ Moisture into the clouds. And when therein
The seeds of water so many in many ways
Have come together, augmented from all sides,
The close-jammed clouds then struggle to discharge
Their rain-storms for a two-fold reason: lo,
The wind's force crowds them, and the very excess
Of storm-clouds (massed in a vaster throng)
Giveth an urge and pressure from above
And makes the rains out-pour. ”

“ It had changed the whole aspect of the scene into a desolate waste of tossing grey sea and driving grey cloud, but there was no more lightning, very little rain, and a mere mutter of far-away thunder. ”

“ But this is only one example of the deliciousness of rain—one, you will say, picked, selected, exceptional. There are many other times at which it is beautiful. It is beautiful when it comes hurried and passionate, fleeing from the storm wind, hurled, like a volley of small musketry, against your streaming panes; and the few tarnished gold leaves of the beech-trees are struck down one after one by the bullets. ”

“ The change is accompanied by thunder, and seems to command all around to clothe themselves for storms. The cold rain comes down in fine drops upon us; the day grows darker, and the clouds press close upon the earth. ”

“ The fog, which in the early morning hesitated whether to roll off and give us one of those beautiful, bright autumn days, the more precious because we feel they are gliding so rapidly from us, or to come down in rain, seems to have decided at last, and a dreary, drenching rain is the result. ”

“ When shall we be able to walk again to the far hills, and plunge into the deep woods, and gather more cardinals along the river's margin? The track along which we trod is probably under water now. How inhospitable Nature is during a rain! In the fervid heat of sunny days, she still retains some degree of mercy for us; she has shady spots, whither the sun cannot come; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes one shiver to think how dripping with wet are those deep, umbrageous nooks, those overshadowed banks, where we find such enjoyment during sultry afternoons. ”

“ But look when the drizzling rain is over, when the clouds break away, when the wind shifts around into the southwest, when the bright sun pours floods of soft, warm light upon the earth; how the grasses then lift up their beaded stalks, and shake their heads, heavy with tears ”

“ Black clouds sink down towards the sea, violent waterspouts suck up the water in spiral columns which spread out above like the crowns of pine-trees, and deluges of rain come down, lasting sometimes for weeks. Everything becomes wet and sodden, and it is useless to try to light a fire with matches. ”

“ The sound of the rain blended with their splashing, and a long-drawn sigh seemed to be floating above the overturned skiff—the endless, labouring sigh of the earth, injured and exhausted by the eternal changes from the bright and warm summer to the cold misty and damp autumn. ”

“ It rains outside overhead Always, a rain that is red, And our faces are soiled with the rain. Here in the season’s despite Day-time and night-time are one, Till the curse of the kings and the chain Break, and their toils be undone. ”

“ I turned to the east. It was raining over Groix, it was raining at Sainte Barbe, it was raining now at the semaphore. High in the storm whirl a few gulls pitched; a nearer cloud trailed veils of rain in its wake; the sky was spattered with lightning; the thunder boomed. ”

“ For hours the downpour continues, but with the coming of the rain the tempest abates, and a fresh cooling breeze refreshes man and beast and plant. Gradually the flashes become fewer and the peals of thunder less violent, the rain-spout becomes a shower, and this ends in a gentle drizzle; the sky clears, the clouds scatter, and the sun breaks forth in splendour. ”

“ There has been rain in the night—heavy rain—and the earth looks soaked and brown and desolate. Great storms, too, had arisen, and scattered the unoffending leaves far and wide, until all the paths are strewn with rustling types of death. ”

“ Roaring rain of the southwest country, rain of the giant drops, rain that in the twinkling of an eye turns little rivers to deep streams. The thunder bird rode the wild dark, the wind, and the sheets of rain, the arrows of lightning fell from the bows of the thunder spirits. ”

“ We have had floods of sunshine followed by deluges of rain, alternate tears and smiles from the petulant sky, gusts of wind and storms. The weather is like a spoiled child whose wishes and expression change twenty times in an hour. ”

“ These mysterious-looking, deep-sounding rain-clouds, sent by God, spreading themselves over the sky, will send down rains in a continuous stream, like watery pillars descending from above, inundating all the ash-heaped mountains and valleys, and extinguish the fearful Samvartak Fire. ”

“ As the storm whirls against the house with strong blasts of rain and snow, our excitement increases by watching the swaying trees, and by listening to the shaking windows, while the lawless winds howl and rage around the corner. When the winds settle from boisterousness into low complaints, and now and then fall into quiet utterances, musical murmurings, the rain pauses, the sky softens, and our minds grow calm and gentle. ”

“ Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, as the end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its flight warning away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing shadow. ”

“ You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat, wet to the skin of your legs, sit on moss-clad rocks and stumps, and hear the lisping of migrating sparrows flitting amid the shrub oaks, sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. A rain which is as serene as fair weather, suggesting fairer weather than was ever seen. You could hug the clods that defile you. You feel the fertilizing influence of the rain in your mind. The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens. ”

“ He had foreseen rain, it is true, the storm, the flood even; but they had always presented themselves to his mind's eye with himself safely quartered in some comfortable old inn.
"Nature discourages eccentricity." ”

“ The shower, the rain, and the storm pass away, the clouds vanish, and the bright stars again shine clearly upon the glad earth. The rain-drops sink into the ground, and gather in subterranean reservoirs, and run in subterranean channels, and bubble up in springs and fountains; and from the mountain-sides and heads of valleys the silver threads of water begin their long journey to the ocean. ”

“ When it is unusually rainy, and summer is the rainy season, still less work can be accomplished. As the day waxes and the heat becomes so intense that it seems impossible to be hotter, the rain, the blessed rain, descends in torrents, often from a cloudless sky. ”

“ There is nothing of the gentle pattering shower about a rain and wind storm on these elevated plains; it comes on with a blow and a bluster that threatens to take one off his feet. The rain is dashed about in the air by the wild, blustering wind, and comes from all directions at the same time. ”

“ The exhaustible cloud “outweeps its rain,” and only the inexhaustible sun seems to repeat and to enforce his cumulative fires upon every span of ground, innumerable. The rain is wasted upon the sea, but only by a fantasy can the sun’s waste be made a reproach to the ocean, the desert, or the sealed-up street. ”

“ In some strata there are to be seen the marks of showers of rain which fell centuries ago, and they are so plain and perfect that they clearly indicate the way the wind was drifting and in what direction the tempest slanted from the sky. ”

“ For two mortal weeks the rain has poured in torrents. The rainy season out here isn't any of your nice polite little shower-a-day affairs, it is just one interminable downpour, until the old earth is spanked into submission. ”

“ This rain did not fall as if it were harried by wind, but with a steady violence, increased from time to time to an intolerable pitch, as though the sky were indeed possessed by some brooding intelligence determined to lash the land without pity. ”

“ When the rain beat at night on the window, and the wind howled round the house, then our hearts would smite us for living in comfort when our friends were suffering the furious weather. But when the glorious sun-lit morning had come, and we looked over the landscape, scarce free from the magic of dawn, then we counted it no hardship to be on the hills. And rain came so seldom during that time, and the sun so often, that the rigor of the hill-life did not appal us. ”

“ With shower and cloud and waterfall?
While yet the world's good heart is cheery,
Who knows if rains will ever brawl?
The storm thinks long, the winds wax weary,
Till winter comes to wind up all
From spring to fall. ”

“ The rain enveloped everything with a grey veil, making all look unsubstantial and unreal; the human unfortunates who were out in the storm appeared cloudy and unsolid, as if each man had sent his shadow out to do his work and kept his substance safe at home. ”

“ The soft wind lifts the rain-mist, flurries it, and spends
Its grief in mournful sighs, drifting from field to field,
Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield
As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind.
The last light is dimming; night comes on behind. ”

“ Every rain-cloud, however fleeting, leaves its mark, not only on trees and flowers whose pulses are quickened, and on the replenished streams and lakes, but also on the rocks are its marks engraved whether we can see them or not. ”

“ Behind us lie rainy weeks—grey sky, grey fluid earth, grey dying. If we go out, the rain at once soaks through our overcoat and clothing;—and we remain wet all the time we are in the line. We never get dry. Those who still wear high boots tie sand bags round the top so that the mud does not pour in so fast. ”