Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/The Rainy Day
THE RAINY DAY.
When the soft summer-shower, whose herald-drops
Stirr'd the broad vine-leaves to an answering joy,
Swells to protracted rain, soothing the mind
With sense of leisure, mother, haste to call
Thy little flock around thee. Let them hail
The rainy day, as one when tender love
Brings forth for them its richest stores of thought.
Think'st thou the needle's thrift or housewife's lore
Yields richer payment? Mother! thou mayst stamp
Such trace upon the waxen mind as life,
With all its swelling floods, shall ne'er blot out.
So take thy bright-eyed nursling on thy knee,
And tell him of the God who rules the cloud
And calms the tempest, and the glorious sun
Brings forth rejoicing from the rosy east
To gild the morn.
Unlock thy treasured hoards
Of hallow'd lore: how little Samuel heard
At midnight, 'neath the temple's solemn arch,
Jehovah's voice, and hasted to obey:
How young Josiah turned to Israel's God
Ere yet eight summers ripen'd on his brow:
And how the sick child to his father cried,
"My head! my head!" then, in his mother's arms,
Grew pale and died: and how the prophet's prayer
Did pluck him from the jaws of death again.
Tell, too, thy little daughter, while she sits
Heedful beside thee, how the shepherds heard
The harps of angels while they watch'd their sheep:
And how the infant Saviour found no bed
Save a straw manger mid the horned train:
And how he raised the ruler's daughter up,
When on her dead brow lay the weeper's tear:
How at the tomb of Lazarus he mourn'd
With the sad sisters: and, when the wild sea,
And wilder tempest raged, stretch'd out his hand
And saved the faint disciple on the wave,
Who pray'd to him.
Then, when the moisten'd eye
Reveals the softening soul, cast in thy seed,
And Heaven and holy angels water it!
So shall the spirit of the summer-storm
Gleam as a rainbow, when thy soul goes up,
With its dread company of deeds and thoughts,
To bide the audit of the day of doom.