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There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
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This is a rare and haunting example of post Apocalyptic poetry. Teasdale wrote this poem in 1918 in response to the on-going first world war. Given that the global Spanish flu pandemic was occurring at this time, too, that also likely contributed some amount of inspiration.
The poem is effective because it so successfully presents an image of a world, absent of human beings, in a state of peace and tranquility. Through nature imagery, Teasdale shows us a world we might want to quietly celebrate. Then in Teasdale’s vision, we learn that even if we human manage to destroy ourselves entirely, nature will persist without missing humans or even remembering we existed.
The effect of this contrast between showing us a world that most of us would long to enjoy, and telling us (in a way that seems both true and obvious) that if we were not in it anymore that it would go on just as before, is to make human endeavors seem inconsequential. We are made to seem quite small and fragile if the world would not even notice our absence. By presenting things from this perspective, human endeavors which are destructive (such as war) are presented to the Reader as though they serve no purpose other than our own harm. The poem is both post Apocalyptic and also anti-war – two things that do seem to go together pretty naturally. You read this poem and wonder whether the people who lead us to war might choose a different path if they instead took the time to enjoy nature in its quiet enduring beauty.
Is Teasdale being realistic? Probably not. I tend to agree with the following, though I wish it were not so:
“Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
However, I do think that a people who prize peace will not fight wars except as a last resort. Certainly there are men and women in both history and in the present who did or do not prize the quiet gift of life and nature nearly enough. There is definitely a lot of value in what the poem advocates. We can also take this Teasdale wisdom, apply it to our own lives, and choose to be judicious as to when we deem interpersonal quarrels to be worthwhile.
The poem is 12 lines, consisting of six perfectly rhyming couplets. Teasdale employs several literary techniques in the piece.
The repetition of “And” to start multiple lines is called anaphora. She uses alliteration to great effect also, with one great example being her use of “s” sounds throughout line 2. She also uses enjambment – which is where a line is cut off before reaching its natural stopping point, so it carries onward without a pause to the next line. Enjambment thus has the effect of speeding us along between lines, and this can create a melodic feel to the work.
