The Latter Rain
The Latter Rain
Original Text
Jones Very, Poems and Essays (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1888): 79. Internet Archive
1The latter rain, -- it falls in anxious haste
2Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
3Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste,
4As if it would each root's lost strength repair;
5But not a blade grows green as in the spring,
6No swelling twig puts forth its tender leaves;
7The robins only mid the harvests sing,
8Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves;
9The rain falls still, -- the fruit all ripened drops;
10It pierces chestnut burr and walnut shell,
11The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops;
12Each bursting pod of talents used can tell,
13And all that once received the early rain
14Declare to man it was not sent in vain.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire / Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2012
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