Longfellow tells us:

“A cold, uninterrupted rain,

That washed each southern window-pane,

And made a river of the road;

A sea of mist that overflowed

The house, the barns, the gilded vane,

And drowned the upland and the plain,

Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,

Like phantom ships went drifting by;

And, hidden behind a watery screen,

The sun unseen, or only seen

As a faint pallor in the sky;–

Thus cold and colorless and gray,

The morn of that autumnal day,

As if reluctant to begin,

Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,

And all the guests that in it lay.” Read on