The Planting
'Tis then I am the tiny thing,A little bug, a figure wondrous small, a sower on prairies limitless.Into her arms I creep and wait and dream that I may serve,And do the work of gods in that vast place.
Awake—asleep—remade to serve,I stretch my arms and lie—intense—expectant—til her moment comes.Then seeds leap forth.The mighty hills rise up and gods and tiny things like me proclaim their joy.
Man in the making—seeds in the ground,O'er all my western country now a wind.Rich, milky smell of cornfields, dancing nymphs,And tiny men that turn away to dream.
Words in this poem
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
- sower n.
- One who, or that which, sows.
- limitless a.
- Having no limits; unbounded; boundless. Davies (Wit's Pilgr.).
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Planting is in the public domain. This text is taken from Mid-American Chants (New York: John Lane Company; London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1918), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sherwood Anderson, The Planting, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/the-planting.html, id L29465.
Form and metre
The Planting is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A thing · limitlessA · serve · placeA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| 'Tis then I am the tiny thing, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A little bug, a figure wondrous small, a sower on prairies limitless. | 19 | ·/˘··/˘/˘··/˘·/˘/˘˘ |
| Into her arms I creep and wait and dream that I may serve, | 14 | ·············· |
| And do the work of gods in that vast place. | 10 | ·········· |
| Awake—asleep—remade to serve, | 8 | ˘/˘/˘/·· |
| I stretch my arms and lie—intense—expectant—til her moment comes. | 16 | ······˘/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Then seeds leap forth. | 4 | ···· |
| The mighty hills rise up and gods and tiny things like me proclaim their joy. | 18 | ·/˘······/˘···˘/·· |
| Man in the making—seeds in the ground, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| O'er all my western country now a wind. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Rich, milky smell of cornfields, dancing nymphs, | 10 | ·/˘··///˘· |
| And tiny men that turn away to dream. | 10 | ·/˘···˘/·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.