sinister on high
To the distorted sky;
As now the night creeps onward, all the land,
Thicket and plain,
Grows cumbered with her clinging shades immense.
And still there is the rain,
The long, long rain.
Like soot, so fine and dense.

The long, long rain.
Rain--and its threads identical,
And its nails systematical,
Weaving the garment, mesh by mesh amain,
Of destitution for each house and wall,
And fences that enfold
The villages, neglected, grey, and old:
Chaplets of rags and linen shreds that fall
In frayed-out wisps from upright poles and tall.
Blue pigeon-houses glued against the thatch,
And windows with a patch
Of dingy paper on each lowering pane,
Houses with straight-set gutters, side by side
Across the broad stone gambles crucified,
Mills, uniform, forlorn.
Each rising from its hillock like a horn,
Steeples afar and chapels round about,
The rain, the long, long rain,
Through all the winter wears and wears them out.

Rain, with its many wrinkles, the long rain
With its grey nails, and with its watery mane;
The long rain of these lands of long ago,
The rain, eternal in its torpid flow!

THE FERRYMAN

The ferryman, a green reed 'twixt his teeth,
With hand on oar, against the current strong
Had rowed and rowed so long.

But she, alas! whose voice was hailing him
Across the far waves dim.
Still further o'er the far waves seemed to float,
Still further backwards, 'mid the mists, remote.

The casements with their eyes.
The dial-faces of the towers that rise
Upon the shore,
Watched, as he strove and laboured more and more.
With frantic bending of the back in two,
And start of savage muscles strained anew.

One oar was suddenly riven,
And by the current driven,
With lash of heavy breakers, out to sea.

But she, whose voice that hailed him he could hear
There 'mid the mist and wind, she seemed to wring
Her hands with gestures yet more maddening
Toward him who drew not near.

The ferryman with his surviving oar
Fell harder yet to work, and more and more
He strove, till every joint did crack and start,
And fevered terror shook his very heart.

The rudder broke
Beneath one sharp, rude stroke;
That, too, the current drove relentlessly,
A dreary shred of wreckage, out to sea.

The casements by the pier,
Like eyes immense and feverish open wide,
The dials of the towers