Flame and Shadow (1920) is a collection of poems by Sara Teasdale, written during and just after the First World War. It contains There Will Come Soft Rains, a short meditation on nature's indifference to human wars.
The collection
Flame and Shadow gathered many short lyrics, arranged in sections, published by Macmillan in New York in 1920. Many poems deal with stars, the sea, night and the passing of time.
It was one of her most admired books and confirmed her place among the leading American poets of the period.
There Will Come Soft Rains
The poem first appeared in Harper's Monthly in July 1918, with the subtitle War Time, during the German spring offensive and the influenza pandemic. It imagines swallows, frogs and robins living on after a war that has destroyed mankind.
Its gentle rhyming couplets contrast with the terrible idea that nature would not notice humanity's disappearance.
Afterlife
Ray Bradbury quoted the poem in his short story There Will Come Soft Rains (1950), later part of The Martian Chronicles, in which a robot house goes on running after a nuclear war.
The poem has since been quoted in films, video games and anthologies as an image of the world after humanity.
Anecdotes
Read by a machine
In Bradbury's story, it is the automatic house that recites Teasdale's poem to its dead owners.
Written in wartime
The subtitle of the poem, War Time, linked it directly to the First World War, still raging when it was published in 1918.
Frequently asked questions
When was Flame and Shadow published?
In 1920, by Macmillan in New York.
What is There Will Come Soft Rains about?
Nature going on peacefully after humanity has destroyed itself in a war.
Who borrowed the poem's title?
Ray Bradbury, for a short story of 1950.