Nut Gatherers

Summary


Nut Gatherers is a short poem that follows a chattering band of children as they patter home along a dusky road, bags and baskets heavy with wild-wood nuts. The speaker calls out to them, asking what they have found, and the answer is plain to see. Light rhymes and a repeating refrain create a cozy, autumn-evening mood. Hendry lingers on the simple sweetness of a harvest day and the joy of childhood.

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Hark! how they chatter
Down the dusk Road,
See them come patter,
Each with his Load.

What have you sought, then,
Gay little Band?
What have you brought, then,
Each in his Hand?

Children carrying baskets of nuts down a dusky autumn road, illustrating the poem Nut Gatherers by Hamish Hendry.

No need to ask it;
No need to tell;
In Bag and in Basket
Your nuts show well!

Nuts from the wild-wood;
Sweet Nuts to eat;
Sweetest in Childhood
When life is sweet.

There they go patter,
Each with his Load;
Hark! how they chatter
Down the dusk Road.


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Credits

Hamish Hendry was a Scottish-born poet who wrote verse for children in the early twentieth century. In this poem, he opens and closes with the same lines, so the procession of nut gatherers seems to arrive and fade away along the same dusk road.