Thorns And Spines

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Title:     Thorns And Spines
Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles [More Titles by Charles]

Thorns and Spines.[1]

In a garden there once grew a beautiful, blossoming thorn. When the spring came, for a fortnight it was always clothed with a robe of white blossoms. They seemed at once relics of winter and promises of summer. It was as if Winter, in departing from the earth, had left behind a fragment of his snowy vestments; and Spring, touching them with her magic wand, had transformed them from snow-wreaths into wreaths of snowy blossoms. They were beautiful even in fading; and for many days after the whiteness had gone, they glowed into a delicate pink, and strewed the earth with silky petals when they fell. On this thorn, one spring, a little brown leaf-bud formed, at the foot of a green twig, the cradle of the green twigs of the next spring. But it happened that, as this brown leaf-bud watched the beauty of the flowers, it grew discontented with its destiny.

"Why am not I a flower-bud?" it murmured, inside its little brown casing. "That would be worth living for!--to fill the air with delicate fragrance, to be sung to by the birds, to be gathered by human hands as a treasure; or even to live unnoticed by any one, but only to be a flower!--a beautiful, fragrant creature, with a coat of many colours, and a crown of golden stamens, and with promise in its heart;--that would be worth living for! But to be a leaf-bud,--a brown, dark, hard leaf-bud!--it would be better to die at once."

And a discontented shiver ran through its veins; and all that summer it never cared to drink in sun or rain, but sat and shivered, and shrivelled on its stem, while all around it meek and happy buds were growing strong and full of life, nourished by the same rain and sunshine. And in the spring, when the white shower of snowy flowers came again on the thorn-tree, and the other leaf-buds had expanded into green twigs, waving and whispering in the breeze, with each a new bud at its feet, the envious and discontented bud had shrivelled and narrowed itself into a thorn, which pierced the hand of the child, as it reached up to gather the spray of fair white blossom.

* * * * *

In a field near this garden there grew a green shrub which at the top expanded into luxuriant branches, giving shade at mid-day to man and beast. But from the lower branches, instead of broad green leaves, grew long sharp spines. One summer day, these spines said to each other, in their short and broken speech, for they could not wave and rustle in the wind like the leaves,--

"We are not worthy to live on the same tree with the beautiful forest leaves which wave in the fresh air above us. We can make no refreshing sound as they do; we give no shade as they do to any creature; and we only prick any one that tries to touch us. But it is very pleasant to us to be allowed to grow from the same trunk as they; and it is very kind of the sweet leaves to sing to us as if we belonged to them, and not to be ashamed of us. We are certainly most happily situated; so far beyond what we have any right to expect!"

But all the leaves rustled in a joyous chorus, and said, "You are our elder sisters, meek and useful spines! If it had not been for you, we should never have come into life at all, and man and beast would have had no shade from us. The hungry cattle would have eaten us before we unfolded, and our parent-tree would never have grown to what it is, had it not been for you, our faithful and patient guardians. If you had rebelled against the gracious hand that moulds us all, and which prevented your expanding into leaves, we should all have perished together long ago. We owe our life to you!" murmured the leaves.

And the rough spines quivered through all their faithful hearts at the words of the leaves.

Then the master passed by, and he said: "Well done, my faithful spines! you have done your work, and guarded my treasures well. But for you my trees would have had no leaves, and my fields no shade."

And the spines wondered, and rejoiced greatly; for they had never thought that, in meekly and contentedly bearing their rough lot, and being what they were meant to be, they were serving the master, and doing such good work for others.

 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Thorns are abortive leaf-buds. Spines are the lower leaves of plants metamorphosed into bristles, to guard the young tree from the attacks of cattle. This little parable was suggested by a passage in "Modern Painters."

[The end]
Elizabeth Rundle Charles's short story: Thorns And Spines

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