Featured Poem: The Trees In The Garden Rained Flowers by Stephen Crane

It's St. Swithin's Day today - for the superstitious amongst you, you'll know that means if it rains at any point in the day today, the forecast is set for forty days and nights of rain. Not just as we're getting a good dose of sunshine, please...

This week's Featured Poem deals with a rain we'd much rather see, and would be able to enjoy without putting the dampener on our sunny spirits, courtesy of American naturalist and realist Stephen Crane.

The Trees In The Garden Rained Flowers

The trees in the garden rained flowers.
Children ran there joyously.
They gathered the flowers
Each to himself.
Now there were some
Who gathered great heaps --
Having opportunity and skill --
Until, behold, only chance blossoms
Remained for the feeble.
Then a little spindling tutor
Ran importantly to the father, crying:
"Pray, come hither!
See this unjust thing in your garden!"
But when the father had surveyed,
He admonished the tutor:
"Not so, small sage!
This thing is just.
For, look you,
Are not they who possess the flowers
Stronger, bolder, shrewder
Than they who have none?
Why should the strong --
The beautiful strong --
Why should they not have the flowers?"
Upon reflection, the tutor bowed to the ground,
"My lord," he said,
"The stars are displaced
By this towering wisdom."

Stephen Crane