There Will Come Soft Rains

By Sara Teasdale

“There Will Come Soft Rains” is Sara Teasdale’s 1918 poem, written during World War I, imagining that nature would carry on untroubled if humanity destroyed itself. In 12 lines of rhymed couplets, rain, swallows, frogs, and robins go on as always, and Spring “would scarcely know that we were gone.” Ray Bradbury later borrowed its title for a famous 1950 story.

Our reading is that the poem’s gentleness is its weapon. It never shows a battlefield, yet by shrinking the war to something the earth will not even notice, it makes one of the most unsettling anti-war statements of its time.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The first six lines describe spring: soft rain and the smell of earth, swallows circling, frogs singing in the pools at night, wild plum trees in white blossom, and robins whistling on a fence wire.

The last six lines turn that beauty into a verdict. None of these creatures will know about the war or care when it ends. If humanity destroyed itself entirely, neither bird nor tree would mind, and Spring, waking at dawn, would hardly notice that people were gone.

The Poem

The text below follows Flame and Shadow (Macmillan, 1920), where Teasdale printed the revised poem under the subtitle “War Time.”

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;

And 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.

Background

Sara Teasdale published the poem in July 1918 in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, in the last year of World War I, as the war and the influenza pandemic were killing millions. In 1920, she revised it for her book Flame and Shadow, changed “calling” to “circling” in line 2, and added the subtitle “War Time.” There it opens a group of six poems about the losses of war.

The subtitle links the poem to her earlier “Spring in War Time” (1915), which asks how spring can bear to return “To a world in grief.” This poem answers that spring does not care. Teasdale had been reading Charles Darwin, and the poem reflects his picture of a natural world that goes on by its own laws, indifferent to human hopes. Some scholars also note that the Sedition Act of 1918 made open criticism of the war dangerous, which may help explain why the poem’s protest is so quiet.

Analysis and Themes

The poem’s power comes from the gap between its gentle surface and its merciless conclusion. Teasdale never raises her voice, and the bleakness arrives almost as an afterthought.

Nature’s Indifference

Every creature in the first half lives for itself. The swallows circle, the frogs sing to the night, and the plum trees bloom whether or not anyone is watching. When Teasdale writes that not one creature “would mind, neither bird nor tree, / If mankind perished utterly,” the indifference is complete. There is something almost comforting in it: the world is beautiful on its own terms and would remain so.

A Quiet Anti-War Poem

The poem refuses every convention of war poetry. There are no trenches, no bodies, and no talk of sacrifice or blame. The war appears only as something that will be “done,” a human episode the world will outlast. By shrinking the conflict to a footnote in the life of the planet, Teasdale delivers a more unsettling pacifism than a battlefield description could.

The Sleeper Who Would Not Wake

The last couplet personifies Spring as a sleeper who wakes at dawn and “scarcely” notices we are gone. She does not grieve, and she is not even fully aware. Human extinction becomes a fact too small to disturb her. The line falls so softly that its desolation can take a second reading to register, which is exactly Teasdale’s effect.

Form and Technique

The poem has 12 lines in six rhymed couplets (AABBCC and so on), in loose lines of four beats, as in “there will COME soft RAINS and the SMELL of the GROUND.” The simple, song-like form suits the pastoral images, and the steady couplets turn over like the seasons, untroubled by the catastrophe folded into the middle of the poem.

Sound does much of the work. Soft consonants and repeated sounds, “swallows,” “shimmering sound,” “Whistling their whims,” make the first half gentle and musical. The repetition of “not one” in lines 7 to 9 marks the turn, and the last line’s plain monosyllables, “that we were gone,” land with quiet finality.

Notable Lines

These lines carry the poem from beauty to verdict.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

Lines 1 to 2

A gentle promise that sounds like comfort, and that the poem will turn into a warning.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

Lines 9 to 10

The turn to human extinction, stated as plainly as the weather.

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Lines 11 to 12

The poem’s famous close, where the end of humanity barely wakes the season.

Themes

Three ideas run through the poem.

Nature’s indifference. The natural world goes on by its own rhythms and owes humanity nothing.

War and its futility. The war that seems all-important to people means nothing to the earth.

Human extinction. The poem calmly imagines a world without people, a vision that later writers found prophetic in the nuclear age.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “There Will Come Soft Rains”.

What is “There Will Come Soft Rains” about?

It is about nature carrying on, beautiful and untroubled, even if humanity destroys itself in war. Rain, swallows, frogs, plum trees, and robins would go on as always, and Spring would “scarcely know that we were gone.”

What is the message of “There Will Come Soft Rains”?

The message is that nature is indifferent to human beings and their wars. By showing that the world would not miss us, Teasdale makes a quiet anti-war point: the war that seems so important to people means nothing to the earth, and humanity could vanish entirely through its own violence.

How is the poem connected to Ray Bradbury’s story?

Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” collected in The Martian Chronicles, takes its title from the poem and quotes it in full. In the story, an automated house recites Teasdale’s poem after a nuclear war has killed the family that lived there.

When was “There Will Come Soft Rains” written?

Sara Teasdale published it in July 1918, during the last year of World War I and the influenza pandemic, in Harper’s Monthly Magazine. She revised it and added the subtitle “War Time” for her 1920 book Flame and Shadow.

What type of poem is “There Will Come Soft Rains”?

It is a short lyric of 12 lines in six rhymed couplets, in a loose four-beat meter. Its gentle, song-like form contrasts with its bleak conclusion.

Glossary

A few words are worth a closer look.

• shimmering (line 2): Glimmering or trembling, used here for sound as well as light.
• tremulous (line 4): Trembling or quivering, like blossoms moving in the wind.
• feathery fire (line 5): The robins’ red-orange breasts.
• whims (line 6): Sudden fancies, here the birds’ playful, changeable songs.
• utterly (line 10): Completely.

In Popular Culture

The poem has found new audiences in fiction and music.

Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” collected in The Martian Chronicles, takes its title from the poem. In the story, an automated house keeps running after a nuclear war has killed its family and, one evening, recites Teasdale’s poem to an empty room.

The poem has also been set for choir by several composers, including Ēriks Ešenvalds and Christopher Tin, whose 2022 album The Lost Birds uses it.

Related Poems

If this poem stays with you, these explore kindred ground.

• Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Human power reduced to ruins by indifferent time.
• Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: The battlefield horror of the same war, shown head-on.
• The Soldier by Rupert Brooke: A World War I poem that, unlike Teasdale’s, finds consolation in dying for one’s country.
• Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost: A short poem about nature’s cycles and the impermanence of beauty.