Above all the darkness of wickedness and war, there is always the sun and there are always the creatures that crawl and creep under the sun. It’s as though we are being reminded that “nature is never spent”, as Hopkins assures us, and that “above all shadows rides the sun”, as Samwise Gamgee says. On a first reading, there is something very comforting and comfortable about this poem. Not one would mind, neither bird nor treeĪnd Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire Īnd not one will know of the war, not one There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,Īnd swallows circling with their shimmering sound In the light or shadow of this fixation or flirtation with the dark side of poetic experience, I was intrigued to discover “There Will Come Soft Rains”, subtitled “War Time”, by the American poetess, Sara Teasdale, which was presumably written in 1918, the year in which Miss Teasdale received the Pulitzer Prize and in which the United States was actively engaged in World War One.

At one end of the spectrum is the poetry of war glorified, such as Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” and Chesterton’s “Lepanto”, whereas, at the other extreme, is the poetry of war demonized, as exemplified in the adversarial verse of Owen and Sassoon. I’ve always been fascinated by war poetry, in all its manifold and multifaceted forms.

Wild plum trees in tremulous white