I Left The City Poem by Philip Henry Savage

I Left the city to the north and walked
Against a southwest wind; the hurtling rain
Showered the empty streets in noisy gusts,
Swept little footsteps down across the walls,
And on the wind came tossing through the trees.
The gusty city was not long to leave,
And underneath the open heaven I found
Breath and a beating wind, a hurrying sky
Of gray cloud under white, a world of rain,
And one long roadway southward under it,
A causey on the marsh, where on the left
A broad reach of the tide lay full, with salt
Red grasses bounded. Swinging to the west
The long, dark wind came streaming, while the rain
Sloped with the wind and swept into my face;
And I rejoiced, exulted in my heart,
Taking a grim delight as I suppressed
Each motion that betrayed me to the rain,
And drew my mantle closer. Rank on rank
The rain came on; the landscape, wetted o'er,
Lay passive, bay and bogland, to the sky;
The wind beat hard, and I through a long hour
Had stood rejoicing in the unwonted storm,
When two small figures hurrying through the rain
Came down the pathway from the town; they laughed,
Two rascal boys set free from school and mother,
And laid small schemes for catching smaller fish,
Clambered across the roadway fence and followed
Through the salt grasses to the reedy shore;
I saw them standing, careful of their lines
And peering o'er the bankside, plotting deep
With one desire in earnest in their minds
And filling them; while I, the idler there,
Leaned on the rail to watch them and the bay,
Gave up the hope I harbored of the west
And sunset, for the hour was drawing near,
Content to take my pleasure in the rain.
The sky had darkened in the hour and drew
A cloak of gray cloud closer to the earth;
Sudden as half aware I watched the scene
A sense of saffron in the western sky
Grew over me; the heavens were lifted high
And broke before my eyes; along the west
Great masses of the storm swept to the north,
Went swarming eastward in the southern sky;
The evening earth grew black beneath the light
That broke through western clouds, that caught the rain
In brightness as it lay in shining pools,
And sprang from wet walls and from dripping roofs.
There midst the white light and the golden edges
Of happy clouds just opening to the earth,
Bluer than painted blue was ever painted,
I saw the sky and prayed — prayed? prayed to whom?
God, God! I cried, but what I meant I knew not.
This was the perfect beauty, this was joy
Supreme, redundant; ah! no longer men
Seek heaven in Beatrice; this was heaven displayed
To the broad, fertile earth and yet I prayed not.
'T was like a gray thought broken by the wind
Of promise and the sun's fulfilment; scattered
To north and south, with routed columns flying,
Majestic rain in grand procession moved
Across the saffron fading western sky,
Cloud upon massive cloud-shape trailing low
Over the sunset earth; while in my eyes
I caught the cool, white, crystal light of heaven
That glistens after rain, and that one grace
Supreme that God has granted pagan man,
The bright blue sky.