Back to: Punjab Board Class 6th English Guide and Notes
Table of Contents
Introduction:
‘How Beautiful is the Rain!’ is a short, lyric poem written by H W Longfellow. The present text here is an extract of the same. The poem details on how people welcome and cherish rain after summer.
About the Poet:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an eminent American poet. He holds the record for being the very first to translate Dante Alighieri’s ‘Divine Comedy’. Famous works of his include ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’, ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, and ‘Evangeline’.
Theme:
The theme of this poem, as the title suggests, is rain. Each line of the poem describes the beauty of the summer rain.
Structure:
The excerpt here consists of three stanzas with lines of varying length. It has an equally varying rhyme scheme which shifts from ‘abbaa’ in stanza one to ‘aabb’ in stanza two to ‘abccba’ in the third stanza.
Stanza 1:
How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain!
The first stanza details on the beauty of the rain. The persona here is in awe of it. He talks about how it seems especially beautiful after the dust and heat that accompanies summer.
Stanza 2:
How it clatters along the roof, Like the tramp of hoofs How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Here, the rain is described as it pours forth. The clattering sound of raindrops on the roofs of houses in compared to a trampling of horse hoofs. Again, how the rain seems to gush out of water spouts, almost as if in a struggle, has been portrayed. This stanza is thus very visual in nature.
Stanza 3:
Across the window-pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain!
The imagery continues. The rain showering on and on seems like a river, only, it flows through the gutters instead and is muddy. Nevertheless, it is very welcome by the people, a joy to behold.
Conclusion:
This is a beautiful poem on the description of rain. This particular extract focuses on the urban aspect, how rain brings joy to the houses in the city as it pours forth.
