Sara Teasdale: There Will Come Soft Rains/ Vendrán lluvias suaves

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone. 

Sara Teasdale 


Vendrán lluvias suaves

Vendrán lluvias suaves y el olor del suelo

y golondrinas sobrevolando con sonido tembloroso,

y ranas en remansos de la noche cantando,

y ciruelos en blancura trémula;

Los petirrojos vestirán su fuego plumoso

y silbarán caprichos en un alambre bajo de las cercas,

y nadie sabrá nada de la guerra--a ninguno

le importará cuando ella habrá acabado

y no le molestaría a nadie, ni a ningún pájaro ni a ningún árbol,

si toda la humanidad fuera eliminada.

Y la mismísima Primavera, cuando ella amanece,

apenas va a saber que hemos desaparecido.

tr. EAC

E. A. Costa      October 12, 2016   Granada, Nicaragua 
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N.B.:(1)”Robins.../Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire”: it

is a serious error to see this as a matter of completing the fire/wire

rhyme in English--there is a masterstroke of hidden metaphor and

imagery here, widely unseen, in the image of a robin as a G or treble

clef on a musical staff--thus the “low wire”--and perhaps, more hidden,

robins too as notes on the same staff; (2) Since Spring  obviously still

exists abstractly for the poet, though asleep, one has moved the tense 

of the line into what is perhaps an even more dramatic and indicative
 present.