Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk, Rumorous Rain

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Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk, Rumorous Rain

1

A tattering of rain and then the reign

Of pour and pouring-down and down,

Where in the westward gathered the filming gown

Of grey and clouding weakness, and, in the mane

Of the light’s glory and the day’s splendor, gold and vain,

Vivid, more and more vivid, scarlet, lucid and more luminous,

Then came a splatter, a prattle, a blowing rain!

And soon the hour was musical and rumorous:

A softness of a dripping lipped the isolated houses,

A gaunt grey somber softness licked the glass of hours.

2

Again, after a catbird squeaked in the special silence,

And clouding vagueness fogged the windowpane

And gathered blackness and overcast, the mane

Of light’s story and light’s glory surrendered and ended

—A pebble—a ring—a ringing on the pane,

A blowing and a blowing in: tides of the blue and cold

Moods of the great blue bay, and slates of grey

Came down upon the land’s great sea, the body of this day

—Hardly an atom of silence amid the roar

Allowed the voice to form appeal—to call:

By kindled light we thought we saw the bronze of fall.

Delmore Schwartz

It’s pouring! “A gaunt grey somber softness licked the glass of hours.”

That’s exactly right.