Paul Dunbar

THE SEEDLING

As a quiet little seedling

    Lay within its darksome bed,
To itself it fell a-talking,
    And this is what it said:

"I am not so very robust,
    But I’ll do the best I can;"
And the seedling from that moment
    Its work of life began.

So it pushed a little leaflet
    Up into the light of day,
To examine the surroundings
    And show the rest the way.

The leaflet liked the prospect,
    So it called its brother, Stem;
Then two other leaflets heard it,
    And quickly followed them.

To be sure, the haste and hurry
    Made the seedling sweat and pant;
But almost before it knew it
    It found itself a plant.

The sunshine poured upon it,
    And the clouds they gave a shower;
And the little plant kept growing
    Till it found itself a flower.

Little folks, be like the seedling,
    Always do the best you can;
Every child must share life’s labor
    Just as well as every man.

And the sun and showers will help you
    Through the lonesome, struggling hours,
Till you raise to light and beauty
    Virtue’s fair, unfading flowers.

by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

A little seedling starts its life as a small seed,

much like the Douglas fir seeds pictured above.

Can you imagine that a seedling will grow into

a mature Douglas fir tree (225 feet tall),

over a thousand times larger than its original size?

This poem, "The Seedling," was one of the many works of

Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American writer to attain international recognition. He was a classmate of Orrville Wright when they attended high school together, where he was the only African-American person to attend that school. Both of his parents were former slaves, and his mother worked as a maid for the Wright family. He wrote this small poem for Orville Wright, which was written on the wall of the Wright Brothers' print shop:

Orville Wright is out of sight
In the printing business.
No other mind is half so bright
As his'n is.

He produced 12 books of poetry, four books of short stories, a play and five novels. His work appeared in Harper's Weekly, the Sunday Evening Post, the Denver Post, Current Literature and a number of other magazines and journals. He also worked at the Library of Congress for a year, before quitting due to his worsening health. Sadly, Paul Laurence Dunbar died in 1906, at the age of only 33.

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