The Poetry Corner

Petit, the Poet

By Edgar Lee Masters

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel - Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens - But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, Ballades by the score with the same old thought: The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; And what is love but a rose that fades? Life all around me here in the village: Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, Courage, constancy, heroism, failure - All in the loom, and oh what patterns! Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers - Blind to all of it all my life long. Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?