After the Winter Rain
After the winter rain,
Sing, robin! Sing, swallow!
Grasses are in the lane,
Buds and flowers will follow.
Woods shall ring, blithe and gay,
With bird-trill and twitter,
Though the skies weep to-day,
And the winds are bitter.
Though deep call unto deep
As calls the thunder,
And white the billows leap
The tempest under;
Softly the waves shall come
Up the long, bright beaches,
With dainty, flowers of foam
And tenderest speeches …
After the wintry pain,
And the long, long sorrow,
Sing, heart!—for thee again
Joy comes with the morrow.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 21, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“After the Winter Rain” originally appeared in Songs from the Golden Gate (Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1895).
Ina Coolbrith
Ina Donna Coolbrith, born Josephine Donna Smith on March 10, 1841, in Nauvoo, Illinois, was an important figure in the literary community of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century San Francisco. She served as the first poet laureate of California from 1915 until her death on February 29, 1928, in Berkeley, California.