THE RAIN had fallen, the Poet arose,
    He pass’d by the town and out of the street;
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
    And waves of shadow went over the wheat;
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
     And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
    And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly,
    The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
    And stared, with his foot on the prey;
And the nightingale thought, ‘I have sung many songs,
    But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
    When the years have died away.’