Poety Friday: Rain in Summer

I love rain. When I was a little girl, I was sure that rain in the summer smelled differently than rain at any other time of year. In fact, I still think that even now. I think some of it has to do with certain other smells we associate with summertime, like the sulfurous scent of thunderstorms or, to pull on some of the predominant summer smells of my childhood, melting street tar or blooming magnolias.

To me, rain smells and sounds are often associated with colors. There can be green rains (often in spring) blue rains (especially in certain mountains, or near twilight) and brown rains (some I've experienced in the desert, or in autumn). Silver-grey rains (the misty kind) and crystal-clear rains (the pouring kinds).

I just love rain. The way it refreshes the world. The way it refreshes me. The way it makes things grow. Its beauty when it falls. The way it fills rivers up and sends streams rushing. The puddles we can play in with great abandon when it's over.

I thought I'd celebrate the first week of summer with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Rain in Summer.

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

~~~
You can read the rest of the poem here. And all of the Poetry Friday posts this week can be found at The Art of Irreverence. This is my first time joining in with an official post for Poetry Friday, but I've enjoyed so many of the poems I've found there over the past year or so.