We to Sigh Instead of Sing in  General   

"Rain and Rain! and rain and rain!"
Yesterday we muttered
Grimly as the grim refrain
That the thunders uttered:
All the heavens under cloud --
All the sunshine sleeping;
All the grasses limply bowed
With their weight of weeping.

Sigh and sigh! and sigh and sigh!
Never end of sighing;
Rain and rain for our reply --
Hopes half-drowned and dying;
Peering through the window-pane,
Naught but endless raining --
Endless sighing, and, as vain,
Endlessly conmplaining.

Shine and shine! and shine and shine!
Ah! to-day the splendor!--
All this glory yours and mine --
God! but God is tender!
We to sigh instead of sing,
Yesterday in sorrow,
While the lord was fashioning
This for our To-morrow!

By James Whitcomb Riley

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Other poems by James Whitcomb Riley:

• A Barefoot Boy
• A Life-Lesson
• A Noon Interval
• A Parting Guest
• A Passing Hail
• A Song of the Road
• A Summer Afternoon
• Almost Beyond Endurance
• At Broad Ripple
• Granny
• Knee-Deep in June
• Liberty
• Nine Little Goblins
• Orlie Wilde
• Our Hired Girl
• The Bumblebee
• The Harper
• The Merman
• The Old Guitar
• The Old Times Were the Best
• The Raggedy Man
• The Rapture of the Year
• The Ripest Peach
• The Rival
• The Song of Yesterday
• The Willow
• There Was a Cherry-Tree
• To a Boy Whistling
• Unless
• We to Sigh Instead of Sing
• Wet-weather Talk
• When the Frost is on the Punkin
• Who Bides His Time
• Ylladmar