Summer on the Lakes/The Book to the Reader
THE BOOK TO THE READER
WHO OPENS, AS AMERICAN READERS OFTEN DO, AT THE END, WITH DOGGEREL SUBMISSION.
To see your cousin in her country home,
If at the time of blackberries you come,
“Welcome, my friends,” she cries with ready glee,
“The fruit is ripened, and the paths are free.
But, madam, you will tear that handsome gown;
The little boy be sure to tumble down;
And, in the thickets where they ripen best,
The matted ivy, too, its bower has drest.
And then, the thorns your hands are sure to rend,
Unless with heavy gloves you will defend;
Amid most thorns the sweetest roses blow,
Amid most thorns the sweetest berries grow.”
If, undeterred, you to the fields must go,
You tear your dresses and you scratch your hands;
But, in the places where the berries grow,
A sweeter fruit the ready sense commands,
Of wild, gay feelings, fancies springing sweet —
Of bird-like pleasures, fluttering and fleet.
Another year, you cannot go yourself,
To win the berries from the thickets wild,
And housewife skill, instead, has filled the shelf
With blackberry jam, “by best receipts compiled, —
Not made with country sugar, for too strong
The flavors that to maple juice belong;
But foreign sugar, nicely mixed ‘to suit
The taste,’ spoils not the fragrance of the fruit.”
“'T is pretty good,” half-tasting, you reply,
“I scarce should know it from fresh blackberry.
But the best pleasure such a fruit can yield,
Is to be gathered in the open field;
If only as an article of food,
Cherry or crab-apple are quite as good;
And, for occasions of festivity,
West India sweetmeats you had better buy.”
Thus, such a dish of homely sweets as these
In neither way may chance the taste to please.
Yet try a little with the evening-bread;
Bring a good needle for the spool of thread;
Take fact with fiction, silver with the lead,
And, at the mint, you can get gold instead;
In fine, read me, even as you would be read.