Rain has been a theme in literature and song for millennia, at times celebrated as a life-giving force, but also lamented for the melancholic feelings that wet and dreary weather brings. Below is a selection of poems and music that captures these various moods.

‘Ode to Rain’ by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

‘Ode to Rain’ is a poem by the Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda. What I’ve presented here is part of the whole poem which runs into pages. They are portions which I find particularly poignant and which convey the essence of the entire ode.

Rain, sea of the upper air,
I have loved you since childhood,
not for your goodness
but for your beauty.
I trudged along in my ruined shoes
whilst threads of streaming sky
unravelled over my head,
bringing a message from on high,
to me and to roots.

Sing, sing on rooftops and on leaves,
sing in freezing winds, sing in my heart,
in my trust, on my roof, in my wins,
sing in my whole life. Go on, slide down
toward the earth, singing your song
and mine. We’ve got to get to work
with these seeds. We’ll share our duties
singing.

The next poem is by the Hungarian poet, Sandor Weores. It builds upon the symbolic value of rain, which after all is water, abundance, the giver of the green growth and of crops and the poem expresses the desire for rain as a longing for the descent of grace into human life.

‘Rain’ by Sandor Weores (1913-1989)

The rain’s ponding away
at the rusty eaves.
Twirling, sliding, bubbling foam –
well, that’s rain.

You, too, and I should walk now
as free as that
on cloud, on air, the meadow
and the vapor roads.

Move around up there and here below
like this liquid thing,
flowing into human life on rooftops
and on shoes.

‘Rain’ by Du Fu (712-770)

The rain fell and the autumn clouds are thin,
The west wind has blown ten thousand miles.
The morning view is good and fine;
A long rain has not hurt the land.
The willow’s leaves are turning emerald green.
On a distant hill a pear tree blazes red.
Upstairs, a flute plays,
Outside, a goose flies in the sky.

Considered as one of Tang dynasty’s greatest poet, Du Fu (712-770) studied to be a civil servant but failed to pass the entrance examinations. Thereafter, he lived an itinerant life, writing poetry about the events he witnessed and endured—famine, political unrest, and personal tragedy. According to one of his translators, David Hinton, “[Du Fu] explored the full range of experience, and from this abundance shaped the monumental proportions of being merely human.” In this poem, Du Fu skillfully uses both melancholic symbolism (the “west wind”) to capture the flux of the time, with messages of hope in the rain itself, in the pear tree blazing red, and in the imagery of a goose, a classic symbol of hope.

Rain in Music

Vikyletka Derkach plays the bandura, an Ukrainian plucked instrument that combines elements of the zither and the lute in a piece simply called “Rain”

“Into each life some rain must fall/some days must be dark and dreary” – lines from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem that also captures the mixed feeling of rain in the following piece by Jungxiong Wang titled, ‘Rain in Jiangnan’, and performed on the erhu, a traditional string instrument.