A Seed
by William Allingham


See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down,
And through the Winter neglected lay,
Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown,
With tiny root taking hold on the clay
As, lifting and strengthening day by day,
It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves,
And cell after cell the Power in it weaves
Out of the storehouse of soil and clime,
To fashion a Tree in due course of time;
Tree with rough bark and boughs' expansion,
Where the Crow can build his mansion,
Or a Man, in some new May,
Lie under whispering leaves and say,
"Are the ills of one's life so very bad
When a Green Tree makes me deliciously glad?"
As I do now. But where shall I be
When this little Seed is a tall green Tree?
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William Allingham, 1824-1889
Nationality: English
Date of Birth: 19 March 1824
Place of Birth: Ballyshannon, County
Date of Death: 18 November 1889
Place of Death: Eldon House, Lyndhurst Road,


Identity:
William Allingham was an Irish poet and civil servant. His father was a shipping merchant. The eldest of five children, his mother died when he was aged nine. Allingham married the watercolourist Helen Paterson in 1874.

Life:
He began his career aged fourteen, working in a bank but quit in 1846 to join the Customs Office. Visiting London in 1847, he became acquainted with the poet Leigh Hunt and in 1849 with Coventry Patmore. In 1850 his first book of poems was dedicated to Leigh Hunt. From 1850-53 he became friends with Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His chief correspondents throughout his life were Rossetti and Henry Sutton, a young poet journalist in Nottingham.

In 1855 Allingham's Day and Night Songs was published with nine illustrations by Rossetti, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes, cut by the Dalziel brothers. His poetry, which was influenced by the tradition of Border Ballads, was close to that of Rossetti and William Morris. In 1865 his Fifty Modern Poems was published, and in 1877 an anthology of his work, Songs, Ballads and Stories.

In 1870, through Carlyle's influence, Allingham became sub-editor of Fraser's Magazine, and then in 1874 he succeeded the historian J. A. Froude as editor, holding this post for five years. As well as JW, he was the friend of such prominent artists and writers as Edward Burne-Jones, Charles Dickens and the Brownings.

Bibliography:
Hill, George Birkbeck (ed.), Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham 1854-1870, London, 1897; Allingham, William, William Allingham: a Diary, H. Allingham & Radford, D., (eds.) London 1907; H. Allingham and E. Baumer Williams (eds.), Letters to William Allingham, London, 1911