subtitle "(War Time)" of the poem, which appears in the Flame and Shadow version of the text, is a reference to Teasdale's poem "Spring In War Time" that was published in Rivers to the Sea about three years earlier. "There Will Come Soft Rains" addresses four questions related to mankind's suffering caused by the devastation of World War I that appear in "Spring In War Time". The questions together ask how Nature can permit the Spring season to start while the war continues. Spring in War Time I feel the Spring far off, far off, The faint far scent of bud and leaf— Oh how can Spring take heart to come To a world in grief, Deep grief? The sun turns north, the days grow long, Later the evening star grows bright— How can the daylight linger on For men to fight, Still fight? The grass is waking in the ground, Soon it will rise and blow in waves— How can it have the heart to sway Over the graves, New graves? Under the boughs where lovers walked The apple-blooms will shed their breath— But what of all the lovers now Parted by death, Gray Death? "There Will Come Soft Rains" expresses an anti-war message in that Nature, as personified by Spring, ignores the four questions asked by the poet in "Spring In War Time" by awakening even as war may destroy any meaning for mankind's existence because such meaning, if it exists at all, only resides within mankind itself. In the poem, Nature proceeds indifferently to the outcome of war or human extinction as the personified Spring would "not mind" because Spring "would scarcely know that we were gone". The "War Time" subtitle and battlefield imagery The Sedition Act of 1918 enacted two months before the original publication of "There Will Come Soft Rains" made it a criminal offense to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States" and forced Teasdale to express her opposition to World War I "obliquely" in what might appear to be a pastoral poem. Flame and Shadow fell under the same regime of censorship since the Sedition Act was not repealed until December 13, 1920, but Teasdale revised her work to improve the chance that readers would perceive the implied battlefield imagery that, if made explicit, could have exposed