The rainbow dies in heaven, and not on earth;
But love can never die; from world to world,
Up the high wheel of heaven, it lives for aye.
– Philip James Bailey, Festus: a poem.

rainbow poem
After his lover had left him
he spent each day in his room
held up and alone as he painted rainbows
not just across the walls, but the windows as well,
the ceiling and the floor,
the bookshelves and the chairs;
each arch was a unique soft hued daub
that radiated outward into a whorl,
a magnified rainbow fingerprint
of delicate and fragile filigree;
then one day, when there was nothing left
to paint over, he got all his stuff together
and with barely a word of good-bye to us
he headed out the door
as we wondered all the while,
who had he really been.

None of us would have expected it,
but the lover that had left him
came back about a week after that;
and we found her in his room, weeping,
as she stared up and about at all the unique
rainbow spirals, we now knew, he’d left for her;
she begged us to tell where he’d gone;
but what could we say? None of us knew.

With little else to do,
she decided to stay with us
and we took care of her as best we could,
but her eyes always lingered on the sky
especially after thunder storms
when the sun would break through
and leave a small rainbow trail;
she’d hold out her hand and wait, expectant,
of what, she never could say.

by matt at shadow of iris

By zak mc at fotopedia

Quotes and poems about rainbows:

As all pigments however are deficient, and cannot approach the rainbow colours …
– William Gilpin

What skilful limner e’er would choose
To paint the rainbow’s varying hues,
Unless to mortal it were given
To dip his brush in dyes of heaven?
– Sir Walter Scott, from Marmion, a poem.

Hope is but a rainbow beam.
– Peregrine Bingham, The Pains of Memory, a poem.

’Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
As the mother-moon’s self, full in face.
– Robert Browning from a poem.

By RonAlmog at Fotopedia

The rainbow spann’d the ocean of the sky,
Sunshine and cloud, the glory and the gloom,
Like grief and joy from light’s same sources given; –
Tears weave with smiles to form the bridge to heaven!
– Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, from King Arthur, a poem

Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky!
A young man will be wiser by and by;
And old man’s wit may wander ere he die.
Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea!
– Lord Alfred Tennyson, From the Holy Grail and Other Poems

Where flowers twine with panther eyes inside
Men’s skins! Rainbows flung like bridles under
Sea Horizons harnesses the glaucous herds!
– Arthur Rimbaud, Drunken Boat, a poem

Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel.
– Derek Walcott

They climbed out of the earth; and, still climbing, rose above it. They were in the rainbow. Far abroad, over ocean and land, they could see through its transparent walls the earth beneath their feet.
– George MacDonald

By zsolt slezak at fotopedia

Physicists tell us that the rainbow, from red through orange, yellow, green and blue to violet is a simple continuum of wavelength. It is biology and/or psychology, not physics, that singles out particular landmark wavelengths along the physical spectrum for special treatment and naming.
– Richard Dawkins

The question therefore, still rests upon conjecture; but if the rainbow appeared for the first time to Noah on leaving the Ark, this may furnish further ground for the inference that, before the Deluge, there were neither rains nor clouds.
– Charles Tennant

The poem becomes the equivalent to a painting, where colors shift into each other’s orbit, often as a means of provocation. Tactile gestures together with the alternation of groups of two or three words (object plus color) characterize the poem. They lead to the rainbow, suggesting the presence of union of all primary colors as well as the shape of the arch, and thus they build bridges, which combine distance with proximity.
– Renée Riese Hubert

By matt at shadow of iris

The Rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the Rose …
– William Wordsworth

Someday we’ll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
– Kermit the frog