Winter Rain

Christina Rossetti

Teacher card

Published: 1866, in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems
Length: 32 lines, 158 words, 1 word in 79 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: rain, winter
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

Every valley drinks,Every dell and hollow:Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,Green of Spring will follow.

Yet a lapse of weeksBuds will burst their edges,Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,In the woods and hedges;

Weave a bower of loveFor birds to meet each other,Weave a canopy aboveNest and egg and mother.

But for fattening rainWe should have no flowers,Never a bud or leaf againBut for soaking showers;

Never a mated birdIn the rocking tree-tops,Never indeed a flock or herdTo graze upon the lea-crops.

Lambs so woolly white,Sheep the sun-bright leas on,They could have no grass to biteBut for rain in season.

We should find no mossIn the shadiest places,Find no waving meadow grassPied with broad-eyed daisies:

But miles of barren sand,With never a son or daughter,Not a lily on the land,Or lily on the water.

Christina Rossetti (died 1894), Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems (1866), lines 1033–1071 of Project Gutenberg ebook #16950. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 32 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#ro-winterrain

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/rossetti-winter-rain · popplepoetry.com