Students of Robert Frost's poetry will be familiar with the poet expressing a love of nature and its beauty. The love in this poem is of a more physical kind...

The poem, Putting in the Seed, opens with a scene common in Frost’s poetry: someone is working in the outdoors. Unusually though, this time the speaker is not alone, and speaks directly to another person, presumably his wife:

You come to fetch me from my work to-night

When supper’s on the table. (lines 1-2)

This would seem to reflect the typical lives of American country dwellers in the early twentieth century: the man working outside while his wife tends the house and prepares the dinner.

Beauty of Nature

The speaker suggests he will find it difficult to tear himself away from the natural world long enough to have his meal, and says they must go quickly into the house before they are both seduced by the beauty of the natural world around them:

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. (lines 7-9)

All well and good: a couple united by their shared love of nature.

Love and Sex

However, a closer examination of the lexical choices leaves the reader in no doubt that a strong sense of physical love runs through this poem as well. The title of the poem can have two meanings: reflecting the job that the speaker is doing, but also suggesting the physical act of impregnation. The speaker comments that it is unlikely he will be able to:

...leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) (lines 3-6)

Perhaps those soft white petals and wrinkled pea represent part of the female anatomy, particularly in view of the final lines of the poem. These describe how in the spring a young seedling will push its way through the soil in a manner which sounds remarkably similar to childbirth:

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. (lines 10-14)

New Life

Thus we clearly see the results of two differing activities: the planting of the seeds in its literal form leads to new plant growth, and the physical act of love (the “passion,” the “Love” which “burns through”) results in the birth of new human life.

Notice as well that the poem is written as a sonnet, a verse form traditionally used to express lofty notions of romantic, platonic and idealised love. Here Frost has adapted the form to express two other forms of love: sheer admiration for the beauty of nature, and a healthy physical love for a partner.

For further discussion of Frost's poems including Road Not Taken, Dust of Snow , Mending Wall, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and Stopping by Woods, please click on the appropriate link.