There Will Come Soft Rains

When Sara Teasdale published “There Will Come Soft Rains,” the notion of apocalypse was in the air. The Great War introduced Western civilization—still rooted in quaint 19th century nostalgia—to the eye-opening realities of what science and technology could do to exponentially up the stakes in war. “There Will Come Soft Rains” reflects Teasdale’s angry opposition to American involvement in World War One and is very much directed to her British and American readership already weary of the war and sickened over the unprecedented destruction and heavy casualties of both soldiers and civilians.

But to narrow Teasdale’s focus to a mere critique of what she perceived to be the pointless viciousness of WWI is to miss how dramatically the poem reveals a poet involved not so much in criticizing her government’s careless slide into a brutal war as she was interested in projecting a post-apocalyptic world, sublime and serene once all humanity is gone. The poem forsakes the self-righteous anger or soul-wrenching pessimism characteristic of pacifist poetry. Indeed, Teasdale mentions neither WWI nor a single soldier nor battle. Absent a footnote that provides the lyric poem its