There Will Come Soft Rains

“Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, “in the city of Allendale, California.”

Or San Diego, to which I returned last night. August 4th, 2026 marks the day on which Bradbury’s essential “There Will Come Soft Rains” takes place. Read the story here, or enjoy this reading by Leonard Nimoy:

Or this one by Burgess Meredith:

Or you could listen to Dimension-X’s radio play. Or if you’re feeling less literary, this 1984 Soviet animated version by Nazim Tulyakhodzayev is my personal favorite adaptation:

Bradbury borrowed the title from Sara Teasdale’s poem of the same name:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Why not take a reading of that one too: