The Rain, the Rain, the beautiful Rain,
Each drop is a link of a diamond chain
That unites the earth with its sin and its stain
To the radiant realm where God doth reign.

The Rain, the Rain, the beautiful Rain,
Each drop is a tear not shed in vain,
Which the angels weep for the golden grain
All trodden to death on the gory plain;

For Rain, the Rain, the beautiful Rain,
Will waken the golden seeds again! 
But, ah! what power will revive the slain,
Stark lying death over fair Lorraine?

’Twere better far, O beautiful Rain,
That you swelled the torrent and flooded the main;
And that Winter, with all his spectral train,
Alone lay camped on the icy plain.

For then, O Rain, O beautiful Rain,
The snow-flag of peace were unfurl’d again;
And the truce would be rung in each loud refrain
Of the blast replacing the bugle’s strain.

Then welcome, welcome, beautiful Rain,
Thou bringest flowers to the parched-up plain;
Oh! for many a frenzied heart and brain,
Bring peace and love to the world again!

August 28, 1870.

119.  Written during the Franco-German war.

M. H. Gill & Sons, Printers, Dublin.

Transcriber’s Notes.

Source.  The collection of poems here presented follows as closely as possible the 1882 first edition.  I assembled this e-text over several years, either typing or scanning one poem at a time as the spirit moved me.  Some poems were transcribed either from the 1884 second edition, or from D. F. MacCarthy’s earlier publications, depending on whatever happened to be handy at the time.  I have proofread this entire e-text against the 1882 edition.  In many instances there are minor variations, mostly in punctuation, among the different source material.  In some cases, if the 1882 edition clearly has an error, I have used the other works as a guide.  Where there are variations that are not obviously errors, I have followed the 1882 edition.  It is certainly possible, where I transcribed from a non-1882 source, that a few variations may have slipt my notice, and have not been changed.

General.  In the printed source the first word of each section and poem is in “small capitals,” which I have removed as per Project Gutenberg standards.  Elsewhere instances of small capitals are rendered as all capitals.  In the printed source the patronymic prefix “Mac” is always followed by a half space; due to limitations in this electronic format I have rendered names in all capitals with a full space (mac CAURA) and names in Mixed Capitals without any space (MacCaura) throughout.  In this plain-text file, italics in the original publication have been either indicated with “double quotes” or ‘single quotes’ if contextually appropriate; otherwise they have simply been dropt.  Accents and other diacritical marks have also been dropt.  However, where the original