voice of the rain

  

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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 fulfillment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck', duly with love returns.)


—Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

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