A Wet Day

Dark, drear, and drizzly, with vapor grizzly,     The day goes dully unto its close;     Its wet robe smutches each thing it touches,     Its fingers sully and wreck the rose.     Around the railing and garden-paling     The dripping lily hangs low its head:     A brood-mare whinnies; and hens and guineas     Droop, damp and chilly, beneath the shed.     In splashing mire about the byre     The cattle huddle, the farmhand plods;     While to some neighbor's a wagon labors     Through pool and puddle and clay that clods.     The day, unsplendid, at last is ended,     Is dead and buried, and night is come;     Night, blind and footless, and foul and fruitless,     With weeping wearied and sorrow dumb.     Ah, God! for thunder! for winds to sunder     The clouds and o'er us smite rushing bars!     And through wild masses of storm, that passes,     Roll calm the chorus of moon and stars.