Explore "The Rain-Crow" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. Can freckled August, -- drowsing warm and blond / Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, / In her hot hair the yellow daisies wound, -- / O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed / To thee? when no plumed weed, no feathered seed / Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond, / That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses, / Through which the dragonfly forever passes / Like splintered diamond.
/ II. Drouth weights the trees; and from the farmhouse eaves / The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, / Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves / Limp with the heat -- a league of rutty way -- / Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay / Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves -- / Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, / In thirsty meadow or on burning plain, / That thy keen eye perceives?