Background to the poem

Teasdale’s delicate, lyrical poem of six rhyming couplets imagines a time when mankind has “perished utterly” as a result of war. The opening of the poem does not immediately give details of the future indicated by the use of “There will..” but we read a calm, confident prediction of “soft rains”. Note the use of “s” sounds in the opening couplet to suggest the sound of the rain. The first three couplets give a tranquil picture of attractive nature and it is only in line seven that the poem turns on the reference to war. However, the poem does not move in to a consideration of the war in any detail. It simply asserts that nature will neither “care” nor “mind” about the destruction of mankind.

In the final couplet Spring is personified as a woman rising at dawn and she too will “scarcely know” that mankind has “gone”. How do you respond to this perspective on war? Is it a bleak vision of the future or one that takes strength from the enduring qualities and beauty of nature?

About Sara Teasdale

By the end of the war Teasdale was a celebrated American poet and winner of prestigious prizes for her poetry. She wrote technically skilful, sensitive lyrics invariably in traditional verse forms.

Ill health meant that she was educated privately for many years before beginning school when she was fourteen. In her early twenties her potential as a poet was seen by a local Missouri newspaper that published her work and a full collection of poems quickly followed. A second collection in 1911 was very successful and brought her many admirers. She married in 1914 although it seems she regretted rejecting another suitor, the poet Vachel Lindsay. She moved with her husband to New York City during the war but her marriage eventually ended in divorce in 1929. Four years later in frail health after a bout of pneumonia she took her own life with an overdose of barbiturates. Her final collection of poems was published in the year of her death and her “Collected Poems” appeared in 1937.