THE BLESSED RAINFALL. 131 



is mine in comprehension. What matters it 

 whether time goes on or no. It leaves a margin 

 for my soul. 



Friday, June 16. During the night the long 

 wished-for rain came, steady and gentle. Ly- 

 ing awake I listened to the pit-pat, patter of 

 the drops upon the roof. How the grass and 

 oats, the corn and wheat, the trees and shrubs 

 must have been gladdened as they drank their 

 fill, the first good draught for more than a 

 month. For hours it fell and this morn the 

 pools in the brooks are again all full. The 

 minnows are rejoicing and the wherry men most 

 happy as they skate to and fro across the limpid 

 surface of the water. For the fall was so gentle 

 and the earth so dry that no erosion has taken 

 place and the water is almost as clear as that 

 which wells forth from my spring. 



As the sky is still o'ercast with gray, from 

 which now and then a drizzle descends, I am 

 writing from the shelter of my tent. No song 

 of bird doth break the solitude. Like myself 

 they are sun-worshipers, singing for joy only 

 when his beams fall athwart their resting 

 places. Not even a crow or jay doth scold, and 

 the chat which yesterday did make the thicket 

 on the hillside ring with his varied vocabulary 

 where is he this morn? Beneath some covert 

 of haw or vine with tail cast down and head 



