RAINY DAY REFLECTIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2685, 30 August 1905, Page 65

RAINY DAY REFLECTIONS.

A RAINY DAY. This is my dream, to have you on a day Of beating rain and sullen clouds of gloom Herewith me, in the old, familiar loom, j Waichmg tlie logs beneath the flames' swift I ■> play Burst into stiango conceits of bud and bloom. The thing? wo know about us here and there. The books we love, half read, on floor and knee, The stem the Dutchman brought from averse* Standing invitingly beside ■your chair, The while we quote and talk and — disagree; Rebuild the castles that we reared in Spain, Reread the poet that our childhood knew. With eyes that meet when some quaint thought lings true. Oh, fusncl, for some sut.li day of cheer and rain, Books, and (lie dear companionship of you! — Tlieodosia Pickering Garrison. Those verses are so utterly the voice of ny heart that they seem my own thought escaped from me, and caught by one distant, unknown, who must suiely be my friend. Is it nob .Longfellow who says?— And the song, fiom beginning la end, I found again in the heart of a Mead. How we welcome a rainy clay. How the universal heart stirs to the sound of the rain ! Each from his own nature and needs ; each from her own heart and history knows in the infinite psalm of life, eternally old, everlastingly new, some veise that thrills and vibrates to the inu&ic of a rainy day. To Friendship, to Love, to Regret and the Past, to Hope and the Future, to buoyant Life, to divine Death — to each and every one ot us, according to our experience and possibility, the rainy day is a threaded rosary of hours instinct with memories. Wide as the universe itself is tlie illimitable, voice, of the rain,

I Like a fast-falling elicwer The dreams cf youth come back again; Low lisping s of the summer ram Dropping on the ripened grain Aa once upon the flower. For we are not all young ; -we wlio are ! young grow older, yet never, heaven granl, old enough to forget the dreams of youth, for that would be a living death beside which the physical death were mercy indeed. For me, this verse is mine, for of all things I love, I love the rain ovon c as I love the sunshine. 'IFriendly Rain" — is ib not a sweet phrase? — companionable, full of faith, hope, and a certain childlike, cheerful trust. —My Friendly Ram.-« The Rain? Who cavils at the Rain? From kind grey skies It comes — calm touch of heaven — Upon my lips, My hair, niy eyes, And slips Aooufc me hke a garment woven of love, And bordered with the seven Sweet viitues of a maid. Who would not be content. Even with his last wish spent, Takiug the simple joys of such a day ? So, guided by sonw stiam Of hidden song it ha-th, and unafiaid j Of any evil, foith I niovo Upon my s*ill, glad) way. j Smiles for tin Rnia! Lcve far the Ram! My friendly Rain! Here is outdoor sympathy with the rain as> full and complete as tha\ indoor picture 1 in our opening lin^s, which sums up all the dear delights of rainy day desires in, Oh,- friend! for some such day of cheer and l^in, Books anil the clear companionship of you. Just as perfect a conception of enjoy- ! meivfc in the companionship of Nature i seems to me to breathe from the lines: Unafraid! O.t any evil, foith I ltiove Upon my "still, glad «.iy. Cloge your eyes, dear hear I, while jet

not pit him«olf against her by either industry, wisdom, or science. The miner no less than the farmer; the pastoi-ilist <is much as, both ; and on them again the whole army of people who live by them and through them — rise with them or on them, a\ ax and wane with the far-reaching-results of ruin in due season. Yet never to us locally — hi our island home, that is to say — is the national impoitauce of the j rain paramount. ' Beside the pleasant, familiar associations born oi our own rainy -day recollection ' , let iw place the dramatic picture of the rain that ushers in the breaking of the south-west monsoon in India, given in the picturesque words of the late Sir Edwin • Arnold : "As June begins all eyes and ! thoughts will be turned to the bank of daik clouds constantly gathering along the , western horizon. These- are the Mcgha- j duta, 'the cloud messengers' of the gods of &ea and sky, and in their black, gigantic folds lie the fates of millions of people. J . . . Higher and higher in the western > &ky the daik clouds ripe until they oveisproatl it, blotting out the sun. Then follows the 'Burra-clieep' — the 'mighty silence,' — when the earth herself, with all her living creatures, seems to listen for what the gods are preparing. But the

brooding silence presently gives place it> the drums of the thunder and the gr<-\v gloom to the lamps of the lightning. Thedense canopy overhead does not merely open, &eems rather to srli* asunder in many places at once, nnd through these great crevices you do not see the natural blue of the sky, but the lurid gold of an atmospheie on tire, from which dart forth javelins of livid flame, which flash and crackle and fly with barbed heads of burn- ! ing splendour to such an accompaniment/ of heaven's artillevy as seems to frighten the sea into calm and f-hake the very hills to their rooi?. '•In the gardens the rain sweeps through treetops, and thirsty milk 'bushes like 11 storm of &hot, sometimes seeming to descend in sheets rather than dioph— • The moiioooii has bui^t 1 '" Meanwhile;, near and far, fiom the faca of the land a fragrance goe* up. stronger and moie intoxicating, yet at the Mime time subtler, than any 'emanating 110 m. fknveis. It is the perfume of tiie kif=e which the sky i.s giving to tlie earth, and all men draw the delightful vaft into mouths-- and nostril*, for the gciL have nob ceased to love India, and this is the savour of the friendship betn eon heaven and earth." Perhaps beside this splendid word picture of a rainy day, which io a national' event, and holds the hopes of millions of human beings, you wilJ scarcely care to return to the tamer, more prc=aic aspects of English life, yet this little shower vei'^e seems to me tweet enough and md enough to be included in our rosary of n'in : —The Shower.— Hour after hour lelcntlessly the n'n Shrivelled tha leaves ano r-aiclr tin meadow gra=s; The sky was j'ellow, and like molten b;a=? The heat poured down until the day wv= doi^e Red tho round moon arose, a..d or.c by c."" Blossomed the stars aud in the liver's L^a r Bohcld their beauty; but the bieeze, aia=' Eefusßd to Lreak thj web the &pic!ei spiia. But -with the da«n a -little clorct drew neai\ Loading a host forth on Jje a^uro plain. A distant rumble, then a forest chc-er, And then a gust that whirled tl.c weather* vpne ; Aud then, at lact— O melody most daar!— « Th.< soft a'liteialion of the rain. Is not that last line delicate in its soothing snggestivenessV For our closing reflection a little thought of the old master, Leonardo da Vinci, on shadows comes to my mind : "Ihe ima»os of things seen through the shadow of the rain are clearer than in the sunlight."