There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale’s deceptively gentle lyric poem “There Will Come Soft Rains,” written amid and against the unfolding horrors of World War One, is that most rare kind of anti-war poem. The poem offers no account of the horrors of a battlefield. There are no soldiers, no gunfire, none of the fear and anxiety typical of a soldier under fire; Teasdale indulges no flame-throwing pacifist polemics, no preachy, self-righteous outrage, no call to throw down arms. Rather the poem offers a simple, lush description of a sweet spring morning: a bucolic scene of frogs and robins and swallows easing quietly into the promise of a new day.

First published in 1918, the poem reminds Teasdale’s British and American readers struggling to make sense of an unrelenting war that appeared uninterested in finding its way to meaning, that nature is larger, broader, and deeper than humanity with its petty feuds. Indeed, if “mankind perished utterly” (Line 10), Teasdale offers, nature would scarcely notice the absence. Written when Teasdale had already found an appreciative audience of readers in both America and Britain—her three collections of poems enjoyed unqualified market success—“There Will Come Soft Rains” offers a sobering reminder of humanity’s inconsequentiality and nature’s splendid ability to survive, endure, and (literally) blossom. 

Poet Biography

Born in St. Louis in 1884, Sara Teasdale grew up in wealth and privilege. Her father was a successful entrepreneur and her mother was a freelance architect and interior designer. A sickly child, Teasdale—homeschooled until she was nine—was a voracious reader. Enamored with the lyric romanticism of contemporary British late Romantic poets—notably Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—Teasdale began writing poetry while still a teenager, publishing her first volume when she was only 23. The critical response was encouraging, and readers responded to the musical lilt of her poems that spoke about the power of love, the generous bounty of nature, the rewards of family, and the difficult implications of mortality.

By the time her first volume appeared, Teasdale had relocated to Chicago and became part of its thriving poetry scene. She relished the robust and animated discussions about the importance of poetry and the responsibility of each generation to rediscover poetry’s potential to speak to a culture. In 1914, Teasdale married a man she felt able to provide her financial security; in 1915, she published her breakthrough collection, Rivers to the Sea, which became a national best-seller. Although some critics dismissed her verse as unsophisticated during an era when a generation of poets restlessly dismantled traditional poetry and the conventions of rhythm and rhyme in an effort to make it new, readers responded to Teasdale’s sense of lyricism, her captivating notion of poetry as a gentle teacher of moral wisdom, and her familiarity with the simple blessings of everyday life. In 1916, she moved to New York City to be part of its robust avant-garde arts community. In 1917, Teasdale’s collection Love Songs was awarded the top honor by New York’s Columbia University Poetry Society—a prize which two years later was renamed the Pulitzer Prize.

Now considered among America’s most prominent poets, Teasdale became increasingly concerned about poetry’s place during her life. America’s puzzling decision to become involved in World War One disturbed Teasdale. She was appalled by the sheer waste of a war fought for no apparent purpose and promising no satisfying end. “There Will Come Soft Rains” reflects such uneasiness. Additionally, New York City was ravaged by an influenza epidemic that killed thousands every month. For Teasdale, humanity appeared more of a nuisance than a boon—more of a destructive force than a creative blessing. She grew increasingly morose. Unhappy in her marriage, Teasdale sought a divorce in 1929. With the national economic collapse into the Great Depression, Teasdale, her frail health worsening, became a virtual recluse, seldom venturing out of her Central Park West apartment and writing little. Depressed and unable to shake a bout of pneumonia, she took an overdose of sleeping pills and died January 29, 1933 at 48. She was buried near her family plot in St. Louis beneath a simple inscription that read: Sara Teasdale American Poet.

Poem Text

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.

Teasdale, Sara. “There Will Come Soft Rains.” 1918. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Upon first reading, the poem appears as little more than a pictorial tableau. It offers no narrative, no unfolding, dramatic dynamic between characters. The poem begins in full description mode of an idyllic outdoor scene. In truth, however, the poem is not actually a description, but a promise of a coming spring morning. The opening line is in the future tense: “There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground” (Line 1). Thus, the poem begins in anticipation.

The detailing is at once sensuous and specific. The poet records the “soft rains” (Line 1) that will soak the parched ground, the swallows “circling” with their “shimmering” sound (Line 2), frogs sounding off from shallow pools, wild plum trees in full-out white blossoms, red-breasted robins skittering about the branches and landing on fences—the detailing is as precise as it is inviting. In the opening stanzas, the poem is immersive and interactive. The reader is invited to step into that spring morning. What is missing is obvious. Amid the soft sounds and gentle scents of spring, there are no mentions of humans. Indeed, the only hint of humanity’s presence is the “low fence-wire” (Line 7) indicating the too-human need to section off the earth and create boundaries.

The third stanza provides the first indirect suggestion that perhaps the poem is sharing a view of an area near or perhaps engulfed by one of humanity’s wars. Is the “low fence-wire” (Line 7) the curls of sharp-fanged barbed wire, an application of technology new to warfare at the time that soldiers would routinely use to protect their encampments from sneak attacks? In this reading, the poem’s premise becomes clear: This beautiful spring morning will come in the future when the war has ended. The earth itself will abide forever. All that humanity will destroy is humanity itself—or more specifically, the vulnerable nation-states and the cultures humanity so deliberately constructs. The speaker offers that once humanity is gone, nature will not regret humanity’s disappearance: “Not one [part of nature] would mind, neither bird nor tree /If mankind perished utterly” (Line 10).

In the closing stanza, the speaker expands their stinging critique of humanity’s unironic compulsion to destroy itself by introducing “Spring” (Line 11) (capitalized in the poem to indicate nature’s dominance). Even as spring, in the first three stanzas, busies itself unfolding the promise of a new day in the lush fields, it is not inclined to miss humanity’s presence. Thus, the poem ends in a sobering premise: If this is the postapocalyptic world, it is fine, sweet, and beautiful because of—not despite—humanity’s disappearance. Spring, and by extension nature, is about perpetual renewal; humanity, with its cannibal logic for engaging in bigger and deadlier wars, is about rising and falling and will eventually will do so indefinitely.