Robert Frost’s “Putting in the Seed” is an Elizabethan sonnet. It consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The rime-scheme, however, departs somewhat from the Elizabethan. Instead of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, Frost’s rime scheme is ABABABABCDCDEE.
First Quatrain: “You come to fetch me from my work to-night”
In the first quatrain, the speaker/farmer addresses his wife. He tells her to come and get him after supper is ready. But he adds the somewhat capricious thought that maybe he’ll be prepared to stop work and maybe he won’t. He will be “burying the white / Soft petals fallen from the apple tree” to fertilize the soil into which he will plant seeds.
Second Quatrain: “(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite”
His wife, it seems, questions him about burying “soft petals,” and the speaker answers that sure, they have not quite decayed, but they will add enough nutrients to help invigorate the soil.
Then the speaker completes his thought that began in the first quatrain: after the wife comes for him, he’ll see if he will stop his work to go back to the house with her, but in fact, he thinks she might forget that she came to get him for supper, when she sees the alluring act of farming. She might want to join him in preparation for planting.
Third Quatrain: “Slave to a springtime passion for the earth”
If she becomes likes him, she will be a “Slave to springtime passion for the earth.” He has this passion, and if she sees how wonderful attending to this work is, she will probably want to join him, because “Love burns through the Putting in the Seed.”
And not only does planting foster such a passionate love, but also after planting, watching for the little sprouts to come bursting from the soil engenders in the earth-passionate slave a devotion that he expects to be contagious.
He looks ahead to “When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,” but waits for the couplet to complete that thought.
Couplet: “The sturdy seedling with arched body comes”
As soon as weeds have started to take over the field/garden, the sprouts will be seen popping through the soil, and his little drama personifies the sprouts: “The sturdy seedling with arched body comes / Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.”
The farmer is fascinated by the bursting forth of little planted seedlings, and he thinks that if his wife comes to get him for supper, she will probably forget what she came for, as she watches the miracle of planting unfold.
Other Frost articles:
- Robert Frost’s Golden Moments: “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
- Frost’s “Birches”: Going Toward Heaven
- Robert Frost: A Lone Wolf
- Frost’s ‘The Oven Bird’
- Frost’s "Mending Wall"
- Frost’s Snow and Woods
- Robert Frost’s Tricky Poem
- Robert Frost’s "Bereft": Hissing Leaves
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