Seeds Of Kindness – #Seguidilla

Rags yet neat, polite and sweet
His eager flock did stay
Tall and proud he stood in line
Until, time to pay…

To let them down, no…
Before he could turn away
Seeds of kindness were sown

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I wrote this based off of a beautiful story I read about selfless giving. About a man in line, with his large family, waiting to pay tickets, only to find out he can’t afford them. A father and his daughter saw this and felt moved to slip the man $20. In doing so the large family could attend the circus. However, the man and his daughter could no longer attend due to the father’s generosity.

I was lead to believe that this story was an exert from the Audrey Hepburn autobiography (although I was a little suspicious about it being $20 given it was the early 1900’s!). When I looked for the source, I came upon snopes.com who claims that the story is actually contributed to Dan Clark as it was published in the 1995 book “A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

Who’s ever story it is, it is a beautiful one about selflessness and caring about others. So when Grace at dVerse challenged us to write a seguidilla, I chose to reflect on this story.

Grace at dVerse described the Seguidilla as follows:

The Seguidilla began as a popular dance song of Spain. The verse form was established and branched into variations by the 17th century. It has an alternating long short rhythm.

The Seguidilla is:
• stanzaic, written in any number of 2 part septets. (7 lines)
• syllabic, 7-5-7-5 : 5-7-5 per line. There is a slight pause between L4 and L5 suggesting L4 should be end-stopped.
• rhymed by assonance xAxABxB or xAxABAB. x being unrhymed. True rhyme is generally not used.
• composed with a volta or change in thought between L4 and L5.
• sometimes serves as a conclusion for another verse.

Thank you for reading! Plant some seeds of kindness today and have a great one!
With a grateful heart,
Heather