AI N

H E R
F T
C E O
V O I
T HE
Walt Whitman
The Voice of the Rain
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 and the bottomless
sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether
changed, and yet the same,
I descend to lave the droughts, atomies, dust-layers of the
globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent,
unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own
origin, and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment,
wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd. duly with love returns.)
Summary:
In this poem, the speaker recounts a conversation he had with
the falling raindrops. He asks the rain, "And who art thou?"
and strangely, the rain answers, calling itself "the poem of the
Earth." The rain goes on to describe how it rises intangibly (as
vapour) out of the land and sea and floats up to heaven, where
it changes form and becomes a cloud. Then it falls back to
Earth to refresh the drought-filled land, allowing seeds to
grow into something vital and beautiful. The speaker equates
the role of the rain to a poet's role in crafting this "song" (or
poem, because Whitman refers to his poems as songs
throughout Leaves of Grass). He goes on to write that the
"song" is born in the poet's heart. It leaves the poet's soul and
changes form, but is always the same at its core and
eventually returns to the poet as love from his readers.
 IMPORTANT POINTS
• Personification is the literary device used in the poem.
• There are two speakers in the poem—the poet and the
rainfall.
• The poem begins in a conversational tone.
• The first two lines form the question put by the poet to
the rainfall and the rest constitute the answer of the
rainfall .
• The last two lines of the poem are given in brackets
.Here rain is not the speaker. This is a message given
by the poet.
 K Y O U
T H A N