A Rainy Day

It’s dark outside.  “Springing the clocks forward” last night hasn’t made much difference—it is still dark outside.  I cannot see what is happening out there, but I do know it’s raining again.  I hear the music it makes on the skylights.  I enjoy the sound, but we’ve had an awful lot of rain here in Maryland over the past year or so.  In fact, Baltimore broke its rainfall record last year. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Rainy Day” comes to mind:

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,

But at every gust the dead leaves fall.

And the day is dark and dreary; 

….

Be still, sad heart! And cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

Longfellow wants us to remember that a “Rainy Day” is not the end of the story—it will not always be “cold, dark and dreary.” “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining…into each life some rain must fall….some days (not all!)”  

On some of these rainy days I tend to forget Longfellow’s wisdom.  I stop seeing a “sun still shining” behind the clouds and start singing with the Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald, 

Into each life some rain must fall,

 But too much is falling in mine.

  But then I try to lift my chin up and sing with Lynn Anderson:

I beg your pardon

I never promised you a rose garden

Along with the sunshine 

There’s gotta be a little rain some time.

If that doesn’t help lift my spirit I’ll sing the “hope” part of Bobby Vinton’s 1962 song, “Rain, Rain Go Away, Come again some other day.”  And if that doesn’t work, my mind  will go back to Longfellow’s “Rainy Day” and relax in his words:  

Be still, sad heart! And cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all

Into each life some rain must fall.