1. Reading By Teacher

As your teacher reads the poem, try to see the pictures that the poet saw. Ask her to read or to explain any part you do not understand.

Rain In Summer

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 a 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 neighboring 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 vapors that arise

From the well-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 numberless drops

Of the incessant rain.

- Longfellow.

2. Study

What does welcome mean? Say the word slowly dividing it into parts.

What does welcomer mean? What does the last syllable mean?

How many welcomers of the rain are mentioned in the poem? Write sentences showing why each of them was glad of its coming.

What words in the poem show what kind of rain this one was? In what month do you think it came?

Can you find any words in the second stanza that sound like what they stand for?

Write down the pairs of rhymes in the first four stanzas. There is one poor rhyme. Try to find it.

Why are the brooks called twisted?

What is a pool? Why is the pool spoken of as an ocean in the fifth stanza?

Find four words in stanza five that you have never used. Try to express their meaning in your own words. Look in the dictionary for words having similar meanings.

What does tawny mean? What does it describe besides the leopard's hide? How was the plain like "a leopard's tawny and spotted hide"?

Read the poem silently. Can you say any of it? Learn the first fifteen lines.