Rain, said the first, as it falls in Venice Is like the dropping of golden pennies Into a sea as smooth and bright As a bowl of curdled malachite. Storm, sang the next, in the streets of Peking Is like the ghost of a yellow sea-king, Scooping the dust to find, if he may, Whatever the earth has hidden away. The mist, sighed the third, that lies on London Is the wraith of Beauty, betrayed and undone By a world of dark machines that plan To splinter the shaken soul of man. The rush of Spring, smiled the fourth, in Florence Is wave upon wave of laughing torrents, A flood of birds, a water-voiced calling, A green rain rising instead of falling. The wind, crooned the fifth, in the bay of Naples Is a quarrel of leaves among the maples, A war of sunbeams idly fanned, A whisper softer than sand on sand. Then spoke the last: God's endless tears Too great for Heaven, anoint the spheres, While every drop becomes a well In the fathomless, thirsting heart of Hell. And thus six bards, who could boast of travel Fifty miles from their native gravel, Rose in the sunlight and offered their stanzas At the shrine of the Poetry Contest in Kansas. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PRETTY MILKMAID by MOTHER GOOSE DRINKING SONG, FR. THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL by RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN TIME TO RISE by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON TO HIS HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS PROEM by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH A NEW PILGRIMAGE: 27 by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT INOPPORTUNE by THOMAS H. BRIGGS JR. EPIGRAM ON ONE BORN BLIND, AND SO DEAD by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) |