There Will Come Soft Rains

I would like to think that Nature will survive our often-destructive footprint on our planet. This poem... a favorite of mine... expresses that hope.

There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

About the author:
1884-1933. Sara Teasdale won the Columbia University Poetry Society prize in 1918 for Love Songs, which also won the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America. Although the popularity of her work declined considerably in the second half of the 20th century, it has received renewed interest in recent years.