Read "The Shower" by James Whitcomb Riley online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The landscape, like the awed face of a child, / Grew curiously blurred; a hush of death / Fell on the fields, and in the darkened wild / The zephyr held its breath.
No wavering glamour-work of light and shade / Dappled the shivering surface of the brook; / The frightened ripples in their ambuscade / Of willows thrilled and shook.
The sullen day grew darker, and anon / Dim flashes of pent anger lit the sky; / With rumbling wheels of wrath came rolling on / The storm's artillery.
The cloud above put on its blackest frown, / And then, as with a vengeful cry of pain, / The lightning snatched it, ripped and flung it down / In ravelled shreds of rain:
While I, transfigured by some wondrous art, / Bowed with the thirsty lilies to the sod, / My empty soul brimmed over, and my heart / Drenched with the love of God.