[Tim McGrath]

I, too, liked 'All Day It Has Rained." Its irregularities would normally have irked my ire, but that didn't happen here. The poem is limber but not loose. Lewis maintains such tight control over his material that the tone is unwavering.

I like the poetry of WW I, which is suffused with so much sadness. Many years ago, Brad Leithauser wrote an essay for the New Criterion called 'A Footnote for Housman.' Near the end of his paper, Leithauser said he had winnowed the poems down to his 12 favorites, including this four-line masterpiece, which will stay with you forever. "On the first couple of readings," he wrote, "I thought it lovely, but now I feel it's something better than lovely."

Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.