The Pebble and the Acorn
“I am a Pebble! I yield to none!”
Were the swelling words of a tiny stone,
“Nor time nor season can alter me;
I am abiding, while ages flee.
The pelting hail and the drizzling rain
Have tried to soften me, long, in vain;
And the dew has tenderly sought to melt,
Or touch my heart; but it was not felt.
There’s none to tell you about my birth,
For I am as old as the big, round earth.
The children of men arise, and pass
Out of the world, like blades of grass;
And many foot that on me has trod
Is gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble! but who art thou,
Rattling along from the restless bough?”
The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay for a moment abashed and mute:
She never before had been so near
This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt for a time at loss to know
How to answer a thing so coarse and low.
But to give reproof of a nobler sort
Than the angry look, or the keen retort,
At length she said, in a gentle tone,
“Since it has happened that I am thrown,
From the lighter element where I grew,
Down to another, so hard and new,
And beside a personage so august,
Abased, I’ll cover my head with dust,
And quick retire from the sight of one
Whom time, nor season, nor storm, nor sun,
Nor the gentle dew, nor the grinding heel
Has ever subdued, or made to feel!”
And soon in the earth she sank away
From the cheerless spot where the Pebble lay.
But ’twas not long ere the soil was broke
By the jeering head of an infant oak!
As it arose, and its branches spread,
The Pebble looked up, and, wondering, said,
“Ah, modest Acorn! never to tell
What was enclosed in its simple shell;—
That the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its little cup!—
And meekly to sink in the darksome earth,
Which proves that nothing could hide her worth!
And O, how many will tread on me,
To come and admire the beautiful tree,
Whose head is towering towards the sky,
Above such a worthless thing as I!
Useless and vain, a cumberer here,
Have I been idling from year to year.
But never, from this, shall a vaunting word
From the humbled Pebble again be heard,
Till something without me or within
Shall show the purpose for which I’ve been!”
The Pebble could ne’er its vow forget,
And it lies there wrapt in silence yet.