After a serious threat of drought, such bountiful rain has fallen in Gippsland and the eastern hill and forest country, that flood warnings have been issued.
Bountiful rain, we have yearned for you, prayed for you,
When, thro' the drought days, ill visions had scope;
Thankfulness vast in the past we displayed for you
When you have come at the end of our hope.
Now you have come, is our subsequent attitude
Smacking of gracelessness far from the mind.
Is there a tinge of reproach in our gratitude
If we suggest that you can be too kind?
Farmland and forest have known your munificence;
Sweet, tender green springs anew in the fields;
Meekly and meetly we hail your beneficence,
Dreaming again fresh, glorious yields.
Bountiful rain, of your bounty give ear to us,
Yet deem us not for your bounty unfit,
If we remark that just now you appear to us --
Well -- overdoing it just a wee bit.
The forest's aweep, but the rain is still falling;
The farmlands are soaking, the paddocks awash;
The swollen hill-creeks thro' their gullies go brawling;
And down thro' the cowyard the dairymen slosh.
Shade of old Noah and all his zoology!
Bountiful rain! Now the drought threat has ceased,
Might we suggest, with an abject apology,
More than enough is as good as a feast.
First published in The Herald, 27 June 1933
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
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