“Have You Ever Seen The Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival is a narration about the never ending hardships of life. The song  exhibits both Romantic and Transcendental elements through the use of figurative language. The song begins by anticipating trouble: “There’s a calm before the storm. I know, it’s been comin’ for some time. “ Akin to the values of Romantic poetry, nature becomes a parallel to the speaker’s own sentiment. The song continues to encapsulate the idealistic view of Romanticism by using simile to compare the sun to the rain in the lines stating, “It’ll rain a sunny day. I know, shinin’ down like water”. In conjunction with line 11, “Sun is cold and rain is hard”, the subject shy’s away from reason and assumes the form of a paradox. The phrase suggests the continuous trials of life though the contrasting natural world, communicating the light that is in darkness and the inevitable return of darkness once there is light.

While the lyrics exhibits elements of Romanticism in its individual components, the theme of the song as a whole emulates American Transcendentalism by using rain as a metaphor. In the 19th century poem, “The Voice of the Rain” by Walt Whitman, line four expresses “Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea”. Like Whitmen, the song exploits the cyclic nature of the rainfall by voicing, “’Til forever, on it goes, Through the circle, Fast and Slow”.  Both expressions imply a higher knowledge of rain beyond its literal meaning. Despite its heavy implications, there is an understanding that rain also represents a rebirth. Like the song’s juxtaposition of the sun and rain, there is always a rainbow after the storm.