The rain is raining all around

Flower God, God of the Spring

• FLOWER god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,
• Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,
• Here I wander in April
• Cold, grey-headed; and still to my
• Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
• Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;
• Spring, flower-planter in meadows,
• Child-conductor in willowy
• Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:
• Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:
• O child, happy are children!
• She still smiles on their innocence,
• She, dear mother in God, fostering violets,
• Fills earth full of her scents, voices and violins:
• Thus one cunning in music
• Wakes old chords in the memory:
• Thus fair earth in the Spring leads her performances.
• One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal
• Green — one more, and my bosom
• Feels new life with an ecstasy.

Rain

• The rain is raining all around,
• It falls on field and tree,
• It rains on the umbrellas here,
• And on the ships at sea.

Summer Sun

• Great is the sun, and wide he goes
• Through empty heaven with repose;
• And in the blue and glowing days
• More thick than rain he showers his rays.

• Though closer still the blinds we pull
• To keep the shady parlour cool,
• Yet he will find a chink or two
• To slip his golden fingers through.

• The dusty attic spider-clad
• He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
• And through the broken edge of tiles
• Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

• Meantime his golden face around
• He bares to all the garden ground,
• And sheds a warm and glittering look
• Among the ivy’s inmost nook.

• Above the hills, along the blue,
• Round the bright air with footing true,
• To please the child, to paint the rose,
• The gardener of the World, he goes.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. Although best known for his novels Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson also left the world with a modest yet considerable body of poetry — including the perennial favorite A Child’s Garden of Verses. A celebrity writer during his own life, Stevenson is one of the most translated writers in the world and, while he fell out of favor for most of the past century, his work has been taken up with relish in this new century.