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!

How it clatters along the roofs;
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like the river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber
Looks at the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighbouring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise

And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Engulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.

In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand:
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread.

They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapours that arise
From the wall-watered and smoking soil
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.

Near at hand,
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain.
As they bend their tops
To the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.

HW Longfellow (February 27, 1907- March 24, 1882): Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator who wrote on the cultural life of the nineteenth-century America. some of his works include Evangeline, The Children's Hours, Paul Revere's Ride and The Song Of Hiawatha. He was a commanding figure to influence the cultural life of the nineteenth-century America.

1. brooks: small streams
2. clatters: makes noise like striking of two objects
3. commotion: sudden noisy confusion or excitement
4. dilated: opened wide
5. fevered: with mental pain
6. fiery: looking like fire
7. fleets: groups of ships sailing together
8. furrowed: ground with long and narrow trenches made by a plough
9. gushes: flows in a quick and abundant stream
10. incessant: continuous without pause
11. lustrous: shining
12. pours: flows quickly in a continuous stream
13. roars: makes a loud, deep sound
14. spout: a pipe or a tube
15. swift: quick
16. tawny: brownish yellow in colour
17. thrift (in the poem): prosperity
18. toilsome: laborious
19. tramp: sound of heavy steps
20. treacherous: dangerous, not to be trusted
21. turbulent: disturbed and in commotion
22. whirling: spinning round and round
23. wonted: habitual
24. yoke-encumbered: weighed down by long pieces of wood fastened around the neck