There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground And swallows circling 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 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 (The sunrise wakes the lark to sing Between the March and April line One solitary bird salutes the night I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree)