In the voice of a deceased poet named Petit, the poem is a rueful self-assessment. Petit remembers spending his life crafting small, intricate verse forms—triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus—all repeating the same tired romantic thought about roses fading and love dying. He calls his own meter “faint iambics” and “seeds in a dry pod,” a dry, rattling tick, while the pine tree outside can turn even that faint sound into a symphony. The real tragedy is his blindness to the rich life around him in the village: tragedy, comedy, courage, failure—all woven in patterns he never noticed. He contrasts his tiny tick-tick rhythms with the roaring voices of Homer and Whitman. The mood is regretful and ironic: a small poet realizes too late that he traded living experience for polished, empty forms.
Petit, the Poet — Summary
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 fades? Life all around me here in the village: Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, Courage, constancy, heroism, failure— All in the loom, and oh what patterns! Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers— Blind to all of it all my life long. Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?