There Will Come Soft Rains - Sara Teasdale - NOTES

There Will Come Soft Rains - Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale’s poem’ There Will Come Soft Rains’ addresses the issues of war and its consequences. It is an attempt from poet’s side to portray the resurgence of nature after the war. Poet states that human beings are very destructive in nature where as non humans are not. As the title suggests ‘There will come Soft Rains’ poet intensely anticipates the orderliness of nature after the calamities caused by humans.

   Speaker of the poem is quite hopeful and optimistic about the ways of the nature and its immense ability to recover from all harmful conditions. Poet says that there will come soft rains and the little birds like swallows will produce merry sounds along with rain. Croaking of frogs as a sign of welcoming the rain indicates that nature has a unique way to respond to the atrocious actions of humans towards their surroundings.

   Images like the bird Robins and its fierce feathers symbolizes the horror of war , here robins which sits on the fence witnesses the horrendous fights of human beings and the futility of it. Poet articulates that neither trees nor animals will not mind if human race perishes entirely due to his own harmful actions. According to Sara Teasdale human beings are fond of making their life totally perilous; humans’ thirst for conquest is unknown to nature.

 Despite of all calamitous events poet prophesies a pleasant atmosphere. In this poem poet brings some images to denote the vitality of nature. Teasdale imagines the world after a devastating war.Her succinct portyal evokes a vivid vision of the future. She makes use of certain images to delineate the terror of war and it’s far reaching consequences.

  She tries to make a clear distinction between humans and non humans, according to the poet animal world and our surroundings may not have feelings towards the extinction of us, they all show a sort of indifferent attitude towards human affairs, our fondness for creating boundaries and generating hostility is not seen in animals .animals and other non human creatures are so active in thinking about their lives and least bothered about our violence.

  Poet uses some remarkable and memorable images to designate her ideas about the attitude of man and nature. For her nature is more resilient ,for instance stanzas like ‘There Will come soft rains and smell of the ground ,And Swallows circling with shimmering sounds’ indicate that freshness and newness of nature is exposed to all and  it will be delightfully welcomed by all creatures except human beings.

 She strongly feels that extinction of human beings will not affect nature and its proceedings. She says that spring would come and other natural establishments will take place in its own rhythm. Nature will be nonchalant to human devastation; more over it will automatically assert its importance in a natural manner. It is apparent that poet has an intense disappointment on hatred and hostility of humans that they show each other.