Vaughan Williams was a devotee of folk music, collecting over 800 folk songs and arranging many of them for various vocal combinations. His first efforts to collect them date to 1903, but his most productive year in arranging folk songs was 1912, when he turned out the collection of Eleven Folk Songs for Schools and other individual folk song arrangements. He also provided piano accompaniment to the Fifteen Folk Songs of England (collected by W.P. Merrick and edited by Cecil J. Sharp), the 11th item of which was "The Seeds of Love." In 1923 Vaughan Williams made his own arrangement of this folk song, using its traditional text.

Scored for unaccompanied male voices, this song is sentimental and quite lovely. It opens with the lines, "I sowed the seeds of love/And I sowed them in the spring," and thereafter maintains a sort of naïve, almost corny expressive manner, replete with obvious rhymes to its verse. But Vaughan Williams treats his material with respect, playing up its folkish spirit and modest charms. His polyphonic writing is simple but most effective, allowing the direct expressive manner of this Romantic song to convey its bright colors and innocent passions. In sum, this is a light and attractive song that will appeal to those with an interest in the folk idiom.

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