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Edward Thomas - Rain
Posted by: podadera (---.58.3.170.proxycache.rima-tde.net)
Date: May 18, 2022 05:24PM

Can anyone help me interpret the last 4 lines of "RAIN" by Edward Thomas:

Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Thank you, Carlos.

Re: Edward Thomas - Rain
Posted by: lg (---.trlck.ca.charter.com)
Date: May 18, 2022 05:46PM

Let's take a look at the entire poem:

Rain
by Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Like much of Edward Thomas's poetry this is probably written while he was engaged in battle during WWI. He is saying that he will soon die and not even the rain's cleansing power's can prevent him from death.

In the lines you quote, he is saying that death is a welcome alternative to the life he is living.

Les



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