- by. Walt Whitman
And who are thou? Said I to soft-falling
shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely
from 'd, altogether changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the droughts,
atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were
seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
And make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after
fulfilment, wandering
Rock' d or unreck 'd, duly with love returns.)
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