Raindrop

“ Raindrops, born a long way up in the hills, united to run through fissures in the earth, through soil-drains, through runnels in the moss of woods, through channels in the clay of sodden fields, each drop bearing infinitesimal grains of what, towards the sea at the end, becomes alluvial soil—each drop quarried, each drop carried, each drop endured for its moment, and then went hence and was no more seen. ”

“ Descending as they do with a considerable speed, these raindrops apply a certain amount of energy to the surface on which they fall. Although the beat of a raindrop is proverbially light, the stroke is not ineffective. Observing what happens where the action takes place on the surface of bare rock, we may notice that the grains of sand or small pebbles which generally abound on such surfaces, if they be not too steeply inclined, dance about under the blows which they receive. ”

“ Through it all drift the rainbow vapors, and from between the trees the sun strikes in long, slanting rays, and lights up the wet vegetation, the rising mist, the falling raindrops, with an effect so tenderly and unutterably lovely that it often brings tears to the eyes. ”

“ Another type of window-pane ice
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The large raindrops are invariably great travellers. The larger the drops the greater the height from which they fell. Some of them travel a distance of five to eight miles before reaching the earth.
Raindrops falling from very high altitudes invariably start out as snowflakes, as the upper section of a rain-cloud, when formed in the high frigid altitudes, is usually composed of snow. The general rain-storm usually furnishes small to medium-sized drops. ”

“ Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One is almost tempted to think that the end is approaching. The very "flood gates of heaven" seem opened, and nature is dissolving. Such a body of rain is falling that the view of all above is obscured by the amazing fall of rain-drops. Think of the countless numbers of leaves in this forest, and that every leaf drops ten to twenty times per minute, and that from the soaking ground rises a grey cloud of minute rain in vapour, and that the air is full of floating globules of water and flying shreds of leaves! ”

“ It rays out and draws to it some floating films from secret cañons. Rain begins, "slow dropping veil of thinnest lawn;" a wind comes up and drives the formless thing across a meadow, or a dull lake pitted by the glancing drops, dissolving as it drives. Such rains relieve like tears.
The same season brings the rains that have work to do, ploughing storms that alter the face of things. These come with thunder and the play of live fire along the rocks. They come with great winds that try the pines for their work upon the seas and strike out the unfit. ”

“ A storm dissipates it at once, while the cessation of the rain is preceded by the return and increased power of scent. A cold, dry easterly wind condenses and absorbs it, and this is even more speedily and irretrievably done by superabundant moisture. On fallows and beaten roads the scent rarely lies well, for there is nothing to detain it, and it is swept away in a moment; while over a luxuriant pasture, or by the hedge-row, or on the coppice, it lingers, clinging to the grass or the bushes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brilliant weather ensued; white frost at night, and strong sun by day. The frost became less biting as the year went on, and the sun more powerful; there were two or three overcast days, and people hoped for rain. But no rain fell, except one poor drizzle, more like dew than rain.
With habits now so ingrained as to become true pleasures, I marked the effects of the drought on all the scene around me. The meadows took the colour of Russian leather, the cornlands that of a knife-board. ”

“ When the fog leaves the mountains, reaching upward, as if afraid of being left behind, the fair weather is near.
Shoddy clouds are of little account, and soon fall to pieces. Have your clouds show a good strong fibre, and have them lined,—not with silver, but with other clouds of a finer texture,—and have them wadded. It wants two or three thicknesses to get up a good rain. Especially, unless you have that cloud-mother, that dim, filmy, nebulous mass that has its root in the higher regions of the air, and is the source and backing of all storms, your rain will be light indeed. ”

“ And, like pebbles and other little people, rivers love to play in the rain. My! What a time! In a storm, with a gray flood pouring from the sky, you hear, mingled with the voice of wind and rain, the swash and gurgle of the eddies as the river goes along in its dance, wild with the joy of it all. In a mountain stream during a heavy rain, with wind, you can also hear the waves dashing against the rocks along the shore or in the stream, and the smothered, bumping, rumbling made by the boulders on the bottom knocking against each other. ”

“ When the rains set in, and fall to the extent of 120 inches before they are over;when everything is enveloped in clouds; when confinement to the house for days and even weeks is unavoidable; when nought is to be heard but the splash of the rain as it falls from the roof, and the heavy drops pattering from leaf to leaf of the old oak trees; when nought can be seen through the impenetrable fog, still as a lake, and feeling so liquid that one almost fancies himself living under water ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But all at once drought comes with her fiery footsteps. Every blade and floweret, gasping for breath, lift their blanched eyelids to the brazen sky; or the night-winds rock the laden branches and strew the ground. Thus we see it is not one unvarying, unchecked progression, from the opening bud to the matured fruit. But every succeeding month is scarred and mutilated by drought and moisture, wind and rain, storm and sunshine. ”

“ The masses of water, hissing and smoking under the furious pelting of the rain, flung themselves upon the hapless Bluebird, laboring heavily in the trough of the waves, or staggering over their summits. A constant glare lit the heaving, tossing world of waters, and the air became one roar of wind, rain, and thunder. ”

“ If I look around me, the cloudless, deep blue sky, the warm colouring of the trees, the masses of red which overtop the tall grass, and the haze rising from the parched ground and spreading upwards like a cloud in the horizon, all tell me that the dry season has returned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rapidly does the landscape brighten under the influence of the welcome shower; and as it becomes more rich and extensive, all nature seems to rise up and rejoice. The birds chirp merrily among the foliage; the flowers raise their drooping heads, and the thirsty ground drinks in with eager haste the mellowing rains. All day long, perhaps, does the rain continue to fall, until the earth is fully moistened and “enriched with vegetable life.” At length, towards evening, the sun peeps out from p. 13among the broken clouds, and lights up, by his sudden radiance, the lovely scene. ”

“ A drop from the sky falls into the pond, forms a little bubble for a while, then bursts, and mingles with the morass; another falls into the stream and becomes a part of the living billow. Is my existence like that of such a rain-drop? ”

“ We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour, and purple, and amber, and blue ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Too well he knew that the breaking of the drought could be no affair of a thunderstorm! many inches of rain must fall before they could hope to recover from the long months of heat and dryness. He woke every half-hour, dreading to find the rain had stopped; but always there was the steady drumming on the roof—no music had ever been so sweet to him. He would go to the window and look out into the blackness: sometimes he went out to the verandah, and walked up and down, all his being rejoicing in the rain, just as the thirsty earth was rejoicing. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But there come days also when the fog spreads itself like a close gray blanket, under which the ground, with its mounds and bushes and heather, creeps stealthily, disappearing a few yards away. And out of the fog comes a fine, mist-like rain, which deposits itself in tiny gray beads on every blade and every pine needle, so that wherever any one goes there is a little sprinkling of water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Soon came a few big drops of rain, then a big wind, and as that lulled, more rain. Then came thunder and lightning, the air grew bitterly cold, and there came a pitiless hailstorm, hailstones bigger than a duck's egg fell, cutting the leaves from the trees and bruising their bark. ”

“ Daylight, gray and violent, steals through the cloud-pall and shows a foaming sea that flattens under the weight of recurrent and increasing squalls. Then comes the rain, filling the windy valleys of the sea with milky smoke and further flattening the waves, which but wait for the easement of wind and rain to leap more wildly than before. ”

“ But comes the violence of the bigger rains
When violently the clouds are weighted down
Both by their cumulated mass and by
The onset of the wind. And rains are wont
To endure awhile and to abide for long,
When many seeds of waters are aroused,
And clouds on clouds and racks on racks outstream
In piled layers and are borne along
From every quarter, and when all the earth
Smoking exhales her moisture. At such a time
When sun with beams amid the tempest-murk
Hath shone against the showers of black rains,
Then in the swart clouds there emerges bright
The radiance of the bow. ”

“ In tranquil, mellow autumn, when the year’s work is about done and the fruits are ripe, birds and seeds out of their nests, and all the landscape is glowing like a benevolent countenance, then the streams are at their lowest ebb, with scarce a memory left of their wild spring floods. ”

“ Thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. In the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. ”

“ 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. ”