Famous Rains Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Rains poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous rains poems. These examples illustrate what a famous rains poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Psalm 147 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 Summer and winter.
A Song for Great Britain.

O Britain, praise thy mighty God,
And make his honors known abroad,
He bid the ocean round thee flow;
Not bars of brass could guard thee so.

Thy children are secure and blest;
Thy shores have peace, thy cities rest;
He feeds thy sons with finest wheat,
And adds his blessing to their meat.

Thy changing seasons he ordains,
Thine early and...Read more of this...

In an Old Town Garden

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Shut from the clamor of the street
By an old wall with lichen grown,
It holds apart from jar and fret
A peace and beauty all its own. 

The freshness of the springtime rains
And dews of morning linger here;
It holds the glow of summer noons
And ripest twilights of the year. 

Above its bloom the evening stars
Look down at closing of the day,
And...Read more of this...

A Cowboy's Prayer

by Badger Clark
(_Written for Mother_)


  Oh Lord. I've never lived where churches grow.
    I love creation better as it stood
  That day You finished it so long ago
    And looked upon Your work and called it good.
  I know that others find You in the light
    That's sifted down through...Read more of this...

The Hostage

by Friedrich von Schiller
 The tyrant Dionys to seek,
Stern Moerus with his poniard crept;
The watchful guard upon him swept;
The grim king marked his changeless cheek:
"What wouldst thou with thy poniard? Speak!"
"The city from the tyrant free!"
"The death-cross shall thy guerdon be."

"I am prepared for death, nor pray,"
Replied that haughty man, "I to live;
Enough, if thou one grace wilt give
For three brief suns the...Read more of this...

The Indian Upon God

by William Butler Yeats
 I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made...Read more of this...

Sorley's Weather

by Robert Graves
 When outside the icy rain 
Comes leaping helter-skelter, 
Shall I tie my restive brain 
Snugly under shelter? 

Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study, 
When outside the winds blow strong 
And the lanes are muddy? 

With old wine and drowsy meats 
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats? 
Shall I drink with...Read more of this...

219. Song—To Daunton Me

by Robert Burns
 THE BLUDE-RED rose at Yule may blaw,
The simmer lilies bloom in snaw,
The frost may freeze the deepest sea;
But an auld man shall never daunton me.
Refrain.—To daunton me, to daunton me,
 And auld man shall never daunton me.


To daunton me, and me sae young,
Wi’ his fause heart and flatt’ring tongue,
That is the thing you shall never see,
For an auld man...Read more of this...

Reedy River

by Henry Lawson
 Ten miles down Reedy River 
A pool of water lies, 
And all the year it mirrors 
The changes in the skies, 
And in that pool's broad bosom 
Is room for all the stars; 
Its bed of sand has drifted 
O'er countless rocky bars. 

Around the lower edges 
There waves a bed of reeds, 
Where water rats are hidden 
And...Read more of this...

Regeneration

by Henry Vaughan
 1.

Award, and still in bonds, one day 
I stole abroad, 
It was high-spring, and all the way 
Primros'd, and hung with shade; 
Yet, was it frost within, 
And surly winds 
Blasted my infant buds, and sin 
Like clouds eclips'd my mind.

2.

Storm'd thus; I straight perceiv'd my spring 
Mere stage, and show, 
My walk a monstrous, mountain's thing 
Rough-cast with...Read more of this...

The Task: Book II The Time-Piece (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...Read more of this...

The Land of the Exile

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what
the time is.
There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is
Saturday, our holiday.
Leave off your work, mother; sit here by the window and tell
me where the desert of Tepantar in the fairy tale is.
The shadow of the rains has covered...Read more of this...

Our Hills

by Sidney Lanier
 Dear Mother-Earth
Of Titan birth,
Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I
Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry
To drink my mother's-milk so near the sky.

O ye hill-stains,
Red, for all rains!
The blood that made you has all bled for us,
The hearts that paid you are all dead for us,
The trees that shade you groan with lead, for us!

And O,...Read more of this...

The City Bushman

by Henry Lawson
 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade...Read more of this...

The Rains

by Philip Levine
 The river rises 
and the rains keep coming. 
My Papa says 
it can't flood for 
the water can run 
away as fast as 
it comes down. I believe 
him because he's Papa 
and because I'm afraid 
ofwater I know I can't stop. 
All day in school I 
see the windows darken, 
and hearing the steady drum 
of rain, I...Read more of this...

Renascence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains...Read more of this...

Buffalo Country

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Out where the grey streams glide, 
Sullen and deep and slow, 
And the alligators slide 
From the mud to the depths below 
Or drift on the stream like a floating death, 
Where the fever comes on the south wind's breath, 
There is the buffalo. 
Out of the big lagoons, 
Where the Regia lilies float, 
And the Nankin heron croons...Read more of this...

The Negro Boy

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Paupertas onus visa est grave.


Cold blows the wind, and while the tear
Bursts trembling from my swollen eyes,
The rain's big drop, quick meets it there,
And on my naked bosom flies!
O pity, all ye sons of Joy,
The little wand'ring *****-boy.

These tatter'd clothes, this ice-cold breast
By Winter harden'd into steel,
These eyes, that know not soothing rest,
But speak the half of what I...Read more of this...

The Invitation

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
BEST and brightest come away ¡ª 
Fairer far than this fair day  
Which like thee to those in sorrow 
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 
To the rough year just awake 5 
In its cradle on the brake. 
The brightest hour of unborn Spring 
Through the winter wandering  
Found it seems the halcyon morn 
To hoar February born;...Read more of this...

Full Fathom Five

by Sylvia Plath
 Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long

Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives

The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains

Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed....Read more of this...

The Englishman In Italy

by Robert Browning
 (PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers,...Read more of this...

At Bessemer

by Philip Levine
 19 years old and going nowhere, 
I got a ride to Bessemer and walked 
the night road toward Birmingham 
passing dark groups of men cursing 
the end of a week like every week. 
Out of town I found a small grove 
of trees, high narrow pines, and I 
sat back against the trunk of one 
as the first rains...Read more of this...

A Toast to the Men

by Edgar Albert Guest
 Here's to the men! Since Adam's time 
They've always been the same;
Whenever anything goes wrong,
The woman is to blame.
From early morn to late at night,
The men fault-finders are;
They blame us if they oversleep,
Or if they miss a car.
They blame us if, beneath the bed,
Their collar buttons roll;
They blame us if the fire is out
Or if there is no coal.
They...Read more of this...

Chant-Pagan

by Rudyard Kipling
 Me that 'ave been what I've been --
 Me that 'ave gone where I've gone --
Me that 'ave seen what I've seen --
 'Ow can I ever take on
With awful old England again,
An' 'ouses both sides of the street,
And 'edges two sides of the lane,
And the parson an' gentry between,
An' touchin' my 'at when we meet --
 Me that...Read more of this...

Hero And Leander

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose...Read more of this...

(From) The Nowhere Man

by Pritish Nandy
When you first came, quiet as the rain that never fell,
in the sunlight that never shone, I whispered words
I had never known and now shall never forget. These
words have grown into secret songs. We have known, and
loved, and shared what only lovers can share in lyric
guilt. There can be nothing simpler than this love of
ours, nothing truer when this darkness...Read more of this...

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