The lesson of the following poem, by T. Berry Smith, is that if we
cultivate the good diligently the evil will thereby be weeded out:
Two fields lay side by side. Only a hedge
Which ran athwart the plain dissevered them.
In one my title lay, and he who owned
The other was my brother. Each alike
Had generous part of one ancestral lot,
And each alike due diligence displayed
On that he called his own. At early spring
Each with a shining share upturned the soil
And gave it to the sun, the wind, the shower.
Thenceforth we rested not. Busily we wrought
And wiped our briny brows ’neath burning suns,
Biding the time of one far-off event.
At summer’s end we each one came at last
To find our recompense. Each had his own,
The end for which he’d toiled. Through all those days
My only thought had been no weeds should grow,
But he had plowed ’mid rows of waving corn
And in so doing killed the cumbering weeds
That grew between. And now at summer’s close
Behold! my field was verdureless and bare,
While his was clad in vestiture of gold.
How vain my toil! His recompense how full,
Who reaped so much, yet plowed no more than I!
(2173)