One of my favorite quotes about spring is from Margaret Atwood: “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” Is anyone planting a garden this time of year? It takes patience to wait for those first green shoots to emerge from the soil. Imagine if you could overhear the conversation of those little seeds as they rest underground, waiting for their day in the sun. This poem by Edith Nesbit does just that. (from”New Outlook: Volume 59,” pg 448, 1898) Maybe you’d like to draw a cartoon of some of your seeds chatting under the earth. What are they saying to each other? –Kelly
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Baby Seed Song
by Edith Nesbit
Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother,
Are you awake in the dark?
Here we lie cosily, close to each other:
Hark to the song of the lark–
“Waken!” the lark says, “waken and dress you;
Put on your green coats and gay,
Blue sky will shine on you, sunshine caress you–
Waken! ’tis morning ’tis May!”
Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother,
What kind of a flower will you be?
I’ll be a poppy–all white, like my mother;
Do be a poppy like me.
What! You’re a sunflower? How I shall miss you
When you’re grown golden and high!
But I shall send all the bees up to kiss you;
Little brown brother, good-bye.
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Great poem, great activity suggestion, Kelly! And, yes, we all smell like dirt this time of year. 🙂
Lovely! I like these lines from E. E. Cummings’ poem about spring: “in Just-spring, when the world is mud-luscious…when the world is puddle-wonderful…”
This is wonderful!
My Mama used to sing me this song as we snuggled and rocked in the rocking chair – just looked it up – thank you so much for these words/lyrics and the indescribable memories
My mama used to sing this song of the little seeds to me in the 1930s and sang it to my children in the 1950s and 60s
In 1956 my first grade teacher read poems to us and I will always remember the last line of this one little round brother goodbye I guess the rest of the poem registered on my subconscious because I always had a bit of a sad longing feeling about to seeds about to be separated after they slept in the winter soil. Thanks for posting this. I am now reminded of my fifth grade teacher spinster Vera Carter from Seymour Indiana who required all of her students to memorize September by Helen hunt Jackson and numerous James Whitcomb Riley like the globlinss will get you if you don’t watch out too old ain’t Mary’s. Later
We memorize the names of all the presidents and Gettysburg address maybe even the inscription on the Statue of Liberty give me your tired your poor. Thanks again for the memory and the opportunity to reminisce