Rain

Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface. On Earth, it is the condensation of atmospheric water vapor into drops of water heavy enough to fall, often making it to the surface. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated leading to rainfall: cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. Precipitation forms via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Rain drops range in size from oblate, pancake-like shapes for larger drops, to small spheres for smaller drops.

• A little rain will fill
  The lily's cup which hardly moists the field.
  • Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia (1879), Book VI, line 215.

• I've been driving for an hour, just talking to the rain.
  • Michelle Branch, "Breathe", Hotel Paper (24 June 2003), California: Maverick Recording Company

• Jack Harkness: There you go! I can taste it! Oestrogen. Definitely oestrogen. Take the pill, flush it away, it enters the water cycle. Feminizes the fish. Goes all the way up into the sky then falls all the way back down onto me. Contraceptives in the rain. Love this planet. Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again.

• Russell T. Davies Torchwood Everything Changes

• Well I've seen them buried in a sheltered place in this town
  they tell you that this rain can sting, and look down
  there is no blood around see no sign of pain
  hay ay ay no pain
  seeing no red at all, see no rain.
  • Peter Gabriel Red Rain (1986)

• For just as the rain and the snow pour down from heaven And do not return there until they saturate the earth, making it produce and sprout, Giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, So my word that goes out of my mouth will be. It will not return to me without results, But it will certainly accomplish whatever is my delight, And it will have sure success in what I send it to do.
  • Isaiah 55:10-11, New World Translation

• For the rain it raineth every day.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act V, scene 1. Song, line 401.

• The Clouds consign their treasures to the fields;
  And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
  Prelusive drops; let all their moisture flow,
  In large effusion, o'er the freshen'd world.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 172.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 655.

• We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
  The white of their leaves, the amber grain
  Shrunk in the wind,—and the lightning now
  Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.
  • Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Before the Rain.

• She waits for me; my lady Earth,
  Smiles and waits and sighs;
  I'll say her nay, and hide away,
  Then take her by surprise.
  • Mary Mapes Dodge, How the Rain Comes, April.

• How it pours, pours, pours,
  In a never-ending sheet!
  How it drives beneath the doors!
  How it soaks the passer's feet!
  How it rattles on the shutter!
  How it rumples up the lawn!
  How 'twill sigh, and moan, and mutter,
  From darkness until dawn.
  • Rossiter Johnson, Rhyme of the Rain.

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

• And the hooded clouds, like friars,
  Tell their beads in drops of rain.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Midnight Mass for the Dying Year, Stanza 4.

• The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
  It rains, and the wind is never weary;
  The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
  But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
  And the day is dark and dreary.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day.

• The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
  And yonder gilded vane,
  Immovable for three days past,
  Points to the misty main.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Travels by the Fireside, Stanza 1.

• It is not raining rain to me,
  It's raining daffodils;
  In every dimpled drop I see
  Wild flowers on distant hills.
  • Robert Loveman, April Rain, Appeared in Harper's Magazine (May, 1901). Erroneously attributed to Swama Rama, who copied it in the Thundering Dawn, Lahore.

• He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.
  • Psalms. LXXII. 6.

• I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
  From the seas and the streams;
  I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
  In their noonday dreams.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud.

• I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
  • Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation, Dialogue II.

• Encyclopedic article on Rain on Wikipedia