Explore "The Rainy Morning" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The dawn of the day was dreary, / And the lowering clouds o'erhead / Wept in a silent sorrow / Where the sweet sunshine lay dead; / And a wind came out of the eastward / Like an endless sigh of pain, / And the leaves fell down in the pathway / And writhed in the falling rain.
I had tried in a brave endeavor / To chord my harp with the sun, / But the strings would slacken ever, / And the task was a weary one: / And so, like a child impatient / And sick of a discontent, / I bowed in a shower of tear-drops / And mourned with the instrument.
And lo! as I bowed, the splendor / Of the sun bent over me, / With a touch as warm and tender / As a father's hand might be: / And, even as I felt its presence, / My clouded soul grew bright, / And the tears, like the rain of morning, / Melted in mists of light.