by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)
There will come soft rains
Language: English
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 awoke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Text Authorship:
- by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933), "There Will Come Soft Rains", subtitle: "(War Time)", appears in Flame and Shadow, first published 1920 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Gary Bachlund (b. 1947), "There will come soft rains", 2013 [ mezzo-soprano and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Garth Baxter (b. 1946), "There will come soft rains" [ voice and guitar ], from From the Heart: Three American Women - Three from Sara, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Ronald Perera (b. 1941), "There Will Come Soft Rains", 2020 [ soprano and piano ], from That We Were Gone. Three Poems in Time of War by Sara Teasdale for Soprano and Piano, no. 3, Pear Tree Press Music Publishers distributed by Subito Music Corp. [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 92