This poem by the American poet Sara Teasdale was first published in 1918. It reminds us that the natural world carries on regardless of war - at the same time reassuring and rather chilling! Interestingly, this poem inspired a short story (by Ray Bradbury) of the same name, about a computer-controlled house which survives a nuclear war, apparently without any inhabitants. Chilling, again!
"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling 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 woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone."
