Leaves of Grass

The Voice of the Rain

  And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
  Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
  I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
  Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
  Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and
      yet the same,
  I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
  And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
  And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
      and make pure and beautify it;
  (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
  Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)