The best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a prolific 19th-century scholar and writer, and the first American to be honored in Poets’ Corner at London’s Westminster Abbey. Much of his work was influenced by Romanticism, a literary movement that emphasized the natural world and human emotion. His narrative poem “The Birds of Killingworth,” in which this quote appears, is no exception. Longfellow’s gentle, simple writing shines through in this line, reminding us to allow circumstances outside our control to play out. Sometimes, the wisest thing to do is nothing at all.