SAINT JOSEPH'S COTTAGE. 1866.
I hear the soft low rain
Falling on the window pane,
Feel it too upon my brain--
Hardly pleasure, hardly pain,
Yet I feel it on my brain
As upon the window pane
Falls the dreamy evening rain.
Softly through these quiet hours
On the scarcely budded flowers,
On the newly glinting green
Through the fragrant woodlands seen,
On the Hawley pastures brown
Come the still showers kindly down,
And the prairie's fertile swell
Blossoms like a fairy dell;
While the graves whose sods I cherish,
Bloom with hopes that cannot perish,
Under this mild April rain
Falling on my window pane,
Which I feel upon my brain.
Hardly pleasure, hardly pain
Is this sense upon my brain,
Yet the tears gush to my eyes
With the rain from vernal skies:
Something in my memory stirred
Which has never lived in word,
Which in thought is scarce defined,
Yet an image on the mind;
Something sweeter than a pleasure
Which with tender tears I treasure,
And comes back upon my brain,
With the vernal evening rain
Falling on my window pane.
