Classic Poem

Weary am I of the sad, spoilt summer!
Noonday and midnight the changeless sound
Filling my ears of the splash of the rain
Falling in sheets on the soaked, sodden ground.
Rain that beats on the thatch overhead,
Rain that taps, taps, taps at the window,
Seems it would show me the grey world around,
Seems, it would drive me to wish myself dead.
Yonder there lies th'unharvested cornfield,
Waits for the sickle in vain,
Lower and lower where runs the long furrow
Bent with the weight of the grain.
Heavy with fruitage, the trees in the orchard
Groan as if tortured,
Overladen, with straining boughs,
While from the branches, never stopping,
Long, long tears are slowly dropping
Down to the earth ...
I know the rain is good,
And fraught with blessing for the thirsty land:
Anon 'twill call the reaper to the field
And fill the barn with food.
For man and beast — it brings down bread from heaven,
The gift of God flung broadcast from his hand,
As in reward for toil;
That little tender shoots below the soil,
Deep, deep below,
Do nestle to the rain with sucking lips
Like infants to the mother's breast. I know
There's many a parched thing
That waits for the fulfilment which the rain
Alone can bring.
I know, full soon the sun will shine again
And touch the apple's cheek with deeper red,
And every labour of our hands repay.
I know it friend — and yet I grieve to lose
One moment of the summer, brief at best,
To see her petals fall, untimely shed,
And all sweet hues and odours washed away.