Explore "A Sudden Shower" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Barefooted boys scud up the street / Or skurry under sheltering sheds; / And schoolgirl faces, pale and sweet, / Gleam from the shawls about their heads.
Doors bang; and mother-voices call / From alien homes; and rusty gates / Are slammed; and high above it all, / The thunder grim reverberates.
And then, abrupt, -- the rain! the rain! -- / The earth lies gasping; and the eyes / Behind the streaming window-pane / Smile at the trouble of the skies.
The highway smokes; sharp echoes ring; / The cattle bawl and cowbells clank; / And into town comes galloping / The farmer's horse, with streaming flank.
The swallow dips beneath the eaves, / And flirts his plumes and folds his wings; / And under the catawba leaves / The caterpillar curls and clings.
The bumble-bee is pelted down / The wet stem of the hollyhock; / And sullenly, in spattered brown, / The cricket leaps the garden walk.
Within, the baby claps his hands / And crows with rapture strange and vague; / Without, beneath the rosebush stands / A dripping rooster on one leg.