The Seed



I was a seed that fell
          In silver dew;
And nobody could tell,
          For no one knew;
No one could tell my fate,
          As I grew tall;
None visioned me with hate,
          No, none at all.

A sapling I became,
          Blest by the sun;
No rumour of my shame
          Had any one.
Oh I was proud indeed,
          And sang with glee,
When from a tiny seed
          I grew a tree.

I was so stout and strong
          Though still so young,
When sudden came a throng
          With angry tongue;
They cleft me to the core
          With savage blows,
And from their ranks a roar
          Of rage arose.

I was so proud a seed
          A tree to grow;
Surely there was no need
          To lay me low.
Why did I end so ill,
          The midst of three
Black crosses on a hill
          Called Calvary?

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
145

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJKLKL GMGMNHNH
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 796
Words 144
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was a poet and writer sometimes referred to as the Bard of the Yukon He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was Robert William Service was born 16 January 1874 in Preston England but also lived in Scotland before emigrating to Canada in 1894 Service went to the Yukon Territory in 1904 as a bank clerk and became famous for his poems about this region which are mostly in his first two books of poetry He wrote quite a bit of prose as well and worked as a reporter for some time but those writings are not nearly as well known as his poems He travelled around the world quite a bit and narrowly escaped from France at the beginning of the Second World War during which time he lived in Hollywood California He died 11 September 1958 in France Incidentally he played himself in a movie called The Spoilers starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich more…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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