Petit, The Poet

-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