Q.III. Look for some more poems on the rain and see how this one is different from them.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Other rain poems mostly describe rain from an observer's view; Whitman's is unusual because the rain itself speaks and stands for the cycle of nature and art.
To do this activity, look up a few well-known poems about rain — for example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Rain in Summer and The Rainy Day, Coates Kinney's Rain on the Roof, or Edward Thomas's Rain. Read them and note how each poet treats the rain, then set them beside The Voice of the Rain.
You will find that most rain poems describe rain from the outside — the poet watches or listens to the rain and records its sound, its appearance, or the mood (joy, gloom, comfort, memories) it stirs in people. Whitman's poem is different in two clear ways. First, he uses personification so completely that the rain itself becomes the speaker — nearly the whole poem is the rain's own reply, beginning "I am the Poem of Earth." Second, he lifts the rain beyond mere description into a symbol: it stands for the eternal, selfless cycle of nature (the water cycle) and, in the closing lines, for the way a song or poem gives itself to …
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