Poems (Ford)/Summer Showers

SUMMER SHOWERS.

The sun-scorched earth seems shrinking
From the dense, heated air;
The trees are lifting upward
Their arms as if in prayer;
In sickly languor drooping
Are all the beauteous flowers,
In silent supplication
For sweet, refreshing showers.

The rustlings of the corn-leaves
In silvery whispers pass;
In quiet waves of verdure
Lies the soft meadow grass;
All nature seems to slumber
In weariness and pain,
Waiting to be awakened
By the soft summer rain.

God hears this mute appealing,
And, in His boundless love,
He turns the crystal channels
Of the bright streams above,
And over field and forest
The gleaming raindrops glance,
While to the wind's low music
Their twinkling footsteps dance.

And as in pearly clusters
Descend the falling showers,
Like tears of pitying angels,
Upon the thirsty flowers,
So does God's tender mercy
Fall like refreshing rain,
To bid the fainting spirit
Rise, live and hope again.

Oh, universal Father,
Beneath whose bounteous hand
Earth spreads her robe of beauty,
And buds and flowers expand,
Who arches earth and ocean
With the clear heaven o'er,
And strews the stars like diamonds
Upon its azure floor,—

If in Thy love Thou sendest
The gentle rain, to fall
On leaf and bud and blossom,
Whose mute lips to Thee call,
How much more wilt Thou succor
Thy human flowers, placed here
To gather strength and beauty
For a sublimer sphere.