A Wet Season

The rain is fierce, it flogs the earth,
    And man’s in danger.
O that my mother at my birth
    Had borne a stranger!
The flooded ground is all around.
    The depth uncommon.
How blest I’d be if only she
    Had borne a salmon!

If still denied the solar glow
    ’Twere bliss ecstatic
To be amphibious⁠—but O,
    To be aquatic!
We’re worms, men say, o’ the dust, and they
    That faith are firm of.
O, then, be just: show me some dust
    To be a worm of.

The pines are chanting overhead
    A psalm uncheering.
It’s O, to have been for ages dead
    And hard of hearing!
Restore, ye Pow’rs, the last bright hours
    The dial reckoned;
’Twas in the time of Egypt’s prime⁠—
    Rameses II.