It
Rains
[From the
Herald of Freedom, July 4, 1845]
While I am writing, it is
raining most magnificently and gloriously, out doors. It absolutely roars, it
comes down in such multitude and big drops. And how refreshing! It waters the
earth. There has been but little rain, and our sandy region had got to looking
dry and distressed. Every thing looks encouraged now, as the great strainer
over head is letting down the shower bath. The grass darkens, as it drinks it
in, with a kind of delicate satisfaction. And the trees stand and take it, as a
cow does a carding. They hold still as a mouse, while they "abide by its
peltings," not moving a twig, or stirring as leaf. The dust of the wide
naked street is transmuted into mud. And the stages sound over the road, as if
they rattled on naked pavement. Puddles stand in all the hollows. You can
hardly see the people for umbrellas - and the clouds look as if they had not
done with us. The prospect for the Canterbury meeting looks lowery. Let it
rain. All for the best. It is extraineous, but I could hardly help noticing the
great Rain and saying this word about it. I think the more mankind regard these
beautiful doings in Nature, the more they will regard each other, and love each
other, and the less inclined to - enslave each other. The readier abolitionists
they will become. And the better. The Rain is a great Anti-Slavery discourse.
And I like to have it pour. No eloquence is richer to my spirit, or music. A
thunder shower, what can match it for eloquence and poetry! That rush from
heaven of the big drops - in what multitude and succession, and how they sound
as they strike! How they play on the old home roof and on the thick tree tops!
What music to go to sleep by, to a tired boy as he lays under the naked roof!
And the great low bass thunder as it rolls off over the hills and settles down
behind them - to the very centre, and you can feel the old Earth jar under your
feet - that is music and poetry and life. And the lightning strikes you - what
of that! It won't hurt you. "Favored man," truly, as uncle Pope says,
"by touch ethereal slain." A light touch, compared to Disease's, the
Doctor's - or Poverty's. I am no trifler with human destiny - but nothing that
naturally happens to a man can hurt him.
Nathaniel
Peabody Rogers