THE VOICE OF THE RAIN THE VOICE OF THE RAIN And who art though? Said I to the 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 form'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 Reck'd or unreck'd,duly with love returns.) by Walt Whitman