Villanelle · Hope
Plant the Row
1Plant the row, although the ground is lean.
2The seed has never asked if it will grow.
3Some years the field forgives you; some, it's green.
4Your father worked this slope. His hands were clean
5of doubt, if not of dirt. He'd say, "Go slow,
6and plant the row, although the ground is lean."
7The frost may come. The rain may stay unseen.
8The crows will mark each furrow as you go.
9Some years the field forgives you; some, it's green.
10There's little you can know in the between
11but work and weather, and the waiting. So
12you plant the row, although the ground is lean.
Original poem © QuillOak — personal sharing is permitted.
“Plant the Row” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/plant-the-row-villanelle
Quick facts
- Poem
- Plant the Row
- Poet
- The QuillOak Editors
- Length
- 19 lines
- Form
- Villanelle
- Themes
- Hope, Nature, Spring
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 19 lines · 6 stanzas of 3–4 lines
- End rhyme
- ABA in 83% of the stanzas — terza rima opening. The remaining stanzas vary, often through slant rhyme.
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
- Refrains
- “Plant the row, although the ground is lean.”“Some years the field forgives you; some, it's green.”“some years the field forgives you; some, it's green.”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a villanelle, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Original QuillOak text. Personal sharing is permitted; other reuse requires permission.
- Author record
- The QuillOak Editorstoday
- Source record
- QuillOak originalPlant the Row, authored for QuillOak by The Quillery
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 a213e967d83a55c9…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.