Cloud-films that hardly stain
The sky’s blue hall
Gather, dissolve, and fall
In sudden visitations of bright rain.
Then the soft voice of seas
Is heard in the green precincts of the trees—
A long, still hushing; then the subtler hiss
Of thousand-bladed grass: then, over this,
Out of the trees’ high tops
The ticking of larger drops
That small leaf-tricklings fill
Till, one by one, whenever the wet leaves stir,
From leaf to overweighted leaf they spill,
Heavy as quicksilver.
These are the showers of spring,
Pilgrims that pass
And scatter crystal seed among the grass;
That make the still ponds sing
Delicate tunes and leave the hedgerows filled
With moist and odorous warmth, brim with blue haze
Hollows of hills and glaze
Each leaf with lacquer cunningly distilled
From sunlight; they that fling
A brightness along the edge of everything,
And the frail splendour of the rainbow build
To span six miles of meadowland, as though
Each rain-dipped flower below
Had breathed its colour up through the bright air
To hang in beauty there.