Briers and Berries.
’Twas on a gloomy, smoky day,
(If rightly I the date remember,
For certainly I cannot say,)
About the middle of September,
When I, astride my pacing grey,
Was plodding on my weary way,
To spend the night and preach the word
To people who had never heard
The gospel; or, to say the least,
Had never viewed it as a feast
Of fat things full of marrow.
In sadness as I rode along
And crossed the silver Unadilla,
The robin sung his plaintive song,
And faintly drooped the fading lily:
The smoky sky, no longer blue,
Assumed a dim and dusky grey;
And Autumn, o’er my feelings threw
The coloring of its own decay,
And filled my heart with sorrow.
I, in my mind, was pondering o’er
The miseries that beset the preacher:
The persecutions which he bore—
(The scoff and scorn of every creature—)
His heated brain—his frame worn down,
Emaciated and dyspeptic—
The hardened bigot’s iron frown—
The jeers and satire of the skeptic—
One mocking revelation’s page—
The other ridiculing reason—
And then the storms we must engage,
And all th’ inclemencies of season.
In this desponding, gloomy mood,
I rode perhaps a mile or two—
When lo! beside the way there stood
A little girl, with eyes of blue,
Light hair, and cheeks as red as cherries;
And through the briers, with much ado,
She wrought her way to pick the berries.
Quoth I, “My little girl, it seems
To me, you buy your berries dear;
For down your hand the red blood streams,
And down your cheek there rolls a tear.”
“O, yes,” said she, “but then, you know,
There will be briers where berries grow.”
These words came home with keen rebuke
To me, who mourned life’s little jostles,
And called to mind the things that Luke
Has written of the first apostles,
Who faced the foe without a fear,
And counted even life not dear.
And since, from that good hour to this,
Come pleasant or come stormy weather,
I still reflect that human bliss
And human wo are mixed together:
Come smiling friend or frowning foe—
‘There will be briers where berries grow.’
Browne.