‘Rain’
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
Chosen Poem
Rain – Edward Thomas
Theme
The rain imagery in this poem sets the themes of death and war and well as the poets feelings of sorrow, loneliness and underlying despair.
Structure
Edward Thomas uses Iambic Pentamer throughout his poem to create sound. The poem is also very rhythmic, which gives the feeling of continuously falling rain.There are no stanzas and only two sentences, which makes the poem flow quite fluidly.Each line has 5 feet (except 9 and 14) which helps to give the poem its rhythm.
Literary Devices
He plays with the rhythm and intensity of each line through a number of different means, each intended to give a sense of the increasing and decreasing intensity of the rain on the sounding walls of the hut, and the poet’s response to this. To create this effect, Thomas uses repetition, clever internal rhyming and also uses the spondee, a metre where two syllables within a foot have equal weight. Another feature of the poem is that it is a monologue, giving us entry into Thomas’ thoughts in solitude, in which the reader is an implied listener, ‘hearing’ the immediate fears and thoughts of the poet. The poem is also split into 2 parts, but is still contained within one stanza because it revolves around one single metaphor, rain.