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Based on the 1918 poem of the same name, written by Sara Teasdale as a reflection on the state of humanity during a pandemic and WWI.
After WWII, Ray Bradbury used Teasdale's poem as the thematic skeleton for his famous 1950 dystopian short story, which shares Teasdale's title.

The melody is mine and so is the ordering and repetition of the words. The words and lines themselves are all directly from Teasdale's poem which reads as follows:

There Will Come Soft Rains
(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.

*******
Context worth considering (taken from wiki):

The "War Time" subtitle and battlefield imagery
The Sedition Act of 1918 enacted two months prior to the original publication of "There Will Come Soft Rains" made it a criminal offense to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States"[9] and forced Teasdale to express her opposition to World War I "obliquely" in what might appear to be a pastoral poem.[10] Flame and Shadow fell under the same regime of censorship since the Sedition Act was not repealed until December 13, 1920, but Teasdale revised her work to improve the chance that readers would perceive the implied battlefield imagery that, if made explicit, could have exposed her to criminal prosecution.

The "War Time" subtitle of "There Will Come Soft Rains", often omitted from copies and adaptations of the work, emphasizes the transition from what was in 1918, the most horrific event in human history, to some future peace. The subtitle inserted for Flame and Shadow (published in 1920 after the end of World War I) has a dynamic effect on a work that otherwise could easily be interpreted as a static post-war construct. The dynamic setting is most easily seen from the viewpoint of a soldier or veteran with battlefield experience, though that viewpoint is not essential, as the replacement of brutal "war time" imagery of World War I battlegrounds by the imagery for peace. The literary device is through implicit contrast. In particular, the imagery in the very first line is ambiguously peaceful and war-like with the latter connoting "soft rains" as miserable conditions for battles fought in mud, and "the smell of the ground" meaning the smell of spent weapons; phosgene, clorine, or mustard gas (close to the ground); or the stench of rotting animal and human corpses. In a combatant's view, the second line for the peaceful image of swallows "circling" (the other Flame and Shadow revision) in the sky replaces a war time image of noisy military aircraft performing reconnaissance or dropping explosives on combatants below. "Pools" for frogs in the third line refers to standing water in flooded war time trenches and the consequential misery of men living, fighting, sickening, and dying in them. The profuse "white" tree blossoms in the fourth line is the white-out of losing consciousness after being struck by an explosive weapon. Robins that "wear feathery fire" in the fifth line is the war time image of soldiers set ablaze by flamethrowers, an ancient weapon modernized for World War I. Finally, the carefree robins whistling on "a low fence-wire" in the sixth line replaces the war time image of infantrymen entangled in barbed wire on a battlefield.

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from songs that sing me, Vol. I: a personal anthology, released November 27, 2022

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Seth Mountain 이산 image

Seth Mountain 이산 South Korea

Seth Martin (aka Seth Mountain or 이산), is a roots musician originally from the Pacific Northwest (US).

Continuing in the radical tradition of artists like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Utah Phillips, Martin has been living in Seoul since 2015. He regularly performs with Korean and foreign folk, indie and rock acts.

"Quite possibly the closest thing we have to Woody Guthrie."
--Bill Mallonee ... more

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