Pitter-patter

I now call it the 'sibilant music of the rain' or sometimes call it 'ebullient gushings'; depending on my mood. I was in Bombay last Friday when on my GTalk I put up a line that read: 'The sibilant music of the rain and Mumbai Magic!' That is the precise moment when I thought of the title of this blog - 'pitter-patter'!

Ah yes, you got it - Mother Goose and the other rhymes that we sang as children! I was suddenly caught up with "Fire in the Mountain Run Run Run" and "Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses"! But somewhere down the lane all the 'pitter-patter' died and we were chanting "little drops of water, little grains of sand" and even as you read it, I am sure you are completing the rhyme. Yes, I know :-)

Sometime later between Chiti Chiti Bang Bang and the Sound of Music came in 'W. H. Longfellow' as we put it then. And sonnets and ballads became the word-of-the-day. The Romantics came in with William Wordsworth - "And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils"!

Pause. Somewhere down the line you begin to think with an air of nonchalance that Longfellow, Wordsworth etc are stuff read by school children. I thought I was 'uber-cool' because just becuase I was caught up with the other literary buggers that I know of  like Piet Hein and his Grooks and W. H. Auden of late.... Pause again -
I read Longfellow's The Rainy Day again (after eons I guess) and I'll write it down for you:

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Now do you call that juvenile?