THE VOICE OF RAIN

Submitted by:-Rishek Singh XI-H

Roll no:-

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 & the bottomless sea,

Up ward to heaven ,whence, vaguely from’d, altogether changed, & yet the same,

The Voice of the Rain

Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land & the bottomless sea,

Up ward to heaven ,whence, vaguely from’d, altogether changed, & yet the same,

The Voice of the Rain

I descend to lave the droughts, atomies, dust layers of the globe,

And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;

The Voice of the Rain

The Voice of the Rain

And forever, by day & night, I give back life to my own origin,

And make pure & beautify it ;

( For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfillment, wandering

Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)

• Personification is the literary device used in the poem.

• There are two speakers in the poem- the poet & the rainfall.

• The poem begins in a conversational tone.

• The first two lines form the question put by the poet to the rainfall & the rest constitute the answer of the rainfall.

• There is a parallel drawn between rain & music. Both originate from a source, rise up, reach fulfillment, wander about & finally return to their origin.

• The present poem is a Nature poem That deals with the cyclic movement of rainfall.

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Important Points

The poet Walt Whitman writes of a conversation he once had with the rain as it dropped gently from the heavens. ‘Who are you?’ the poet asked. Stragely, the raindrops replied and the poet translates its answer for the readers.

‘I am the poem of the earth,’ said the rain. The rain adds that it is born in the form of invisible and intangible vapours that rise eternally from the earth’s land and deep water bodies. It then reaches heaven (the sky) and changes its appearance complete to form clouds of abstract, changeable shapes. Yet, at its core, it remains the same as it was at birth.

The Voice of the Rain

It then returns to earth as little droplets which wash away the dust and rejuvinate the drought-ridden, dry land. New plants find life which would have otherwise remained hidden and unborn inside the land as mere seeds. Thus, this perpetual cyclic lifestyle ensures that the rain retuns to its origin, the earth, giving it life, and making it pure and beautiful.

The poet realises that the rain’s life is similar to that of any song. A song’s birth place is the poet’s heart. Once complete, it ispassed on (wanders) from one person to another. It may change (reck’d) or remain the same (unreck’d) as it travels, but one day, it returns to the poet with all due love of the listeners.

The Voice of the Rain

Walt Whitman broke several conventions of poetry when writing this poem. There is no rhyme scheme nor do the lines stay of the same length. Although each phrase is just enough to be read in one breath, we find ourselves breathless as the line runson and eventually becomes a part of the whole. This kind of poetry was known as prosaic poetry, that is, poetry that is written like prose.

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