Alun Lewis.  All Day It Has Rained.

Alun Lewis. All Day It Has Rained.

Author: The Ceylon Press September 27, 2025 Duration: 2:57

 
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors 
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors, 
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground 
And from the first grey wakening we have found 
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain 
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap 
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap, 
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream, 
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream 
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home;
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
-Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.


ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Copyright Credit: Alun Lewis.  First Published in Horizon, 1941. Selected Poems of Alun Lewis, ed. Jeremy Hooker & Gweno Lewis. Unwin Paperbacks 1981


There’s a particular sound to the jungle-a layered quiet of leaves, birds, and distant water. It’s from within that atmosphere that The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle finds its voice. Produced by The Ceylon Press, each episode is recorded at the Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, nestled in the wilds northwest of Kandy. This isn’t a standard literary analysis show; it’s an experience of resonance. Here, timeless poems by renowned authors are read aloud, allowing their rhythms and meanings to intertwine with the ambient sounds of a Sri Lankan forest. The setting does more than provide backdrop-it actively shapes how you hear each word, offering a fresh and quietly profound perspective on verses you thought you knew. This podcast invites a slower kind of listening, where a classic sonnet might be punctuated by a monsoon shower or the call of a hornbill. It’s for anyone who believes place matters, that the environment where a story is told becomes part of the story itself. Tune in for a unique fusion of the literary and the natural, a deliberate retreat into the world of spoken art framed by one of the planet’s most vibrant soundscapes.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 89

The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle
Podcast Episodes
R. S. Thomas.  On the Farm. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:49
There was Dai Puw. He was no good. They put him in the fields to dock swedes, And took the knife from him, when he came home At late evening with a grin Like the slash of a knife on his face. There was Llew Puw, and he w…
Siegfried Sassoon.  Suicide In The Trenches. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:45
I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a…
Seamus Heaney.  Digging . [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:35
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowe…
Shel Silverstein.  Where the Sidewalk Ends. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:48
There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the pepper…
Sappho. The Anactoria Poem. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:56
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers, others call a fleet the most beautiful of sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what- ever you love best. And it's easy to make this understood by everyone, for…
Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Ozymandias. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:47
I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold co…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Kubla Khan. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:49
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdle…
Stephen Spender.  The Truly Great. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:22
I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, s…
Robert Frost.  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:42
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Betwee…
Richard Blanco.  For / After / Jan Beatty. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:09
After my third shot of tequila / chased by a lime sour as my rant: fuck this-fuck that-fuck them-fuck me-fuck it all / you slashed me / same as your poems’ slashes / slash me / when you asked me: so, why the fuck don’t y…