'Rain' by Edward Thomas

Rain Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying to-night or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be towards what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. Edward Thomas

'Dawn' by Zbigniew Herbert

Dawn

At the profoundest moment before dawn, the first voice resounds, both
blunt and sharp like a knife stab. Then rustlings growing from minute to
minute bore through the stump of night.
It seems there is no hope at all.
Whatever is struggling for light is mortally frail.
And when a bloody cross section of a tree appears on the horizon,
surreally big and almost painful, let us not for get to bless the miracle.

Zbigniew Herbert