Don’t you just love it when you stumble upon two things and they seem to connect? Sharing with you an old poem which was introduced to me by Poem-a-Day – it you’ve not yet subscribed I urge you to do so immediately, for we need the light of poetry in our lives as much as bread and water these days; and also an inscription I stumbled across in a nook in an quiet English country churchyard.

The Rainbow
by Effie Waller Smith
Love is a rainbow that appears 
When heaven’s sunshine lights earth’s tears. 
All varied colors of the light 
Within its beauteous arch unite: 
There Passion’s glowing crimson hue 
Burns near Truth’s rich and deathless blue;
And Jealousy’s green lights unfold 
‘Mid Pleasure’s tints of flame and gold. 
O dark life’s stormy sky would seem, 
If love’s clear rainbow did not gleam!

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 11, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.