Lines 1-8 Summary

Lines 1-2

SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—

• We begin the poem with some seeds. Ah, that seems like a great symbol to start with, eh Shmoopers? After all, you can plant seeds and watch them blossom and flourish.
• Well… not these ones, as it turns out—they're in "a dry pod." It doesn’t seem like anything's going to grow out of these old, shriveled seeds today.
• Perhaps that’s because they're also about to explode. We mean, how else do you explain all the ticking?
• They're clearly tied to a time bomb.
• But did they have time bombs in 1916 when this poem came out? Even if they did, would they have special nano-timebombs that could fit into a seed pod? 
• Unlikely—it looks like we'll have to go another route: that "tick[ing]" is the noise being made by the seeds themselves, as they rattle around in the dried seed pod.
• The speaker, using a simile, compares the noise to "mites in a quarrel." Now, mites are tiny little critters than live in your couch, or on your eyelashes (if you want to have nightmares, go ahead and check out what they look like under powerful magnification). The point here is that they are wee, tiny, miniscule—and their "quarrel[s]" (fights) would likewise be small and insignificant. Pacquiao vs. Mayweather, they ain't.
• So, after two lines we have: a whole lot of nothing—just some tiny, dried seeds making very insignificant noises.
• All the same, those noises sure are persistent aren't they? We mean, there are a lot of "tick"s in these first lines.
• Check out "Sound Check" for more on what all this ticking does to the sound of the poem.

Lines 3-4

Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.

• We learn more about these noises. To our speaker, they sound like "faint iambics." Who the what now? 
• Easy does it, Shmoopers. An iamb is, we're happy to tell you, a term of poetic construction. It's what you call a two-syllable pair in which the first syllable is unstressed, the second stressed. (The effect is a daDUM sound, like what you hear when you say "allow" out loud.)
• That's a pretty weird metaphor for a sound, we have to say. Then again, it makes perfect sense if our speaker is a poet, as the title suggests it is. (Check out "Speaker" for more on this Petit guy.)
• It seems like the most important thing about these sounds is that they're faint, just like those tiny little sounds made by mites mussing it up. Again, we're reminded that there's nothing much to listen to here.
• Then again, line 4 tells us that there is a way to amplify these little, insignificant sounds. Apparently, we have a pine tree that acts like both a mixing board and a microphone, making them into a "symphony." That is one smooth conifer. (For more on that, check out "Symbols: The Pines.")

Lines 5-6

Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:

• Whoa, whoa, whoa—you thought you were getting your poetry term on in line 3? That was just the tip of the iceberg, er… poem-berg. Let us break it down for you:
• Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, and ballades (or ballads) are all particular forms of poems, each requiring the poet to follow a specific, pre-set formula to make them.
• So, they all have that in common. What's more, according to our speaker they also have some same old thought in common. 
• It turns out that there are a ton of these things ("score" is old-timey talk to mean twenty, but here just means "a bunch" or "lots), but they all add up to the same tired idea. 
• What idea might that be, hmm? Let's read on, Shmoopers.
• But before we do, all this talk about poetic form is a good opportunity to talk about this poem's form…
• Yeah, it doesn't have one. This thing is following a pattern all its own. For more on why that might be, check out "Form and Meter."

Lines 7-8

The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?

• It turns out that all these form-poems have the same idea: time flies. 
• Wow—how's that for insightful? 
• The speaker also notes that they all use the same kind of figurative language, using the metaphor of "snows" and "roses" to indicate the fading effects of time's passage—they melt or wilt away.
• It also turns out that the rose is a handy metaphor for love fading as well. A wilting rose can show time's passage, or love's decline.
• Of course, we'd forgive you if your reaction to this poetic flourish would be: "Duh." Isn't all poetry about love, and roses, and time passing, and snow? Yep—and that's pretty much the speaker's point. All these poems, written in old forms, are saying the same, old, boring things over and over… and over again.