“All day it has rained” by Alun Lewis
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain *nature itself seems against them
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream, *analphora/emphasising
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream the monotony of war
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces, *asyndeton (listing)
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.
And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.
Alun Lewis was born and raised in South Wales during the Depression. Early in
1940, despite his pacifist views Lewis enlisted and, after long periods of training,
joined the war in India. ‘All Day It Has Rained’ was written whilst Lewis was stationed
with the Royal Engineers at Longmoor, Hampshire. It is among the poems featured
in Alun Lewis: Collected Poems.
In this poem the nihilist persistence of the rain achieves a trance effect upon the
men being described. The subject of the first stanza is almost uniformly plural, as
though the individual soldiers have lost themselves in a regimental "we." The only
exception-"! saw a fox/ And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home"-establishes
the speaker as different from the other men only in that he writes, and perhaps
perceives more. The concept of "home," too, is one that he holds separate from his
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain *nature itself seems against them
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream, *analphora/emphasising
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream the monotony of war
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces, *asyndeton (listing)
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.
And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.
Alun Lewis was born and raised in South Wales during the Depression. Early in
1940, despite his pacifist views Lewis enlisted and, after long periods of training,
joined the war in India. ‘All Day It Has Rained’ was written whilst Lewis was stationed
with the Royal Engineers at Longmoor, Hampshire. It is among the poems featured
in Alun Lewis: Collected Poems.
In this poem the nihilist persistence of the rain achieves a trance effect upon the
men being described. The subject of the first stanza is almost uniformly plural, as
though the individual soldiers have lost themselves in a regimental "we." The only
exception-"! saw a fox/ And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home"-establishes
the speaker as different from the other men only in that he writes, and perhaps
perceives more. The concept of "home," too, is one that he holds separate from his
