America, if you think about it, is a treasure chest of little gems – people, places, poems, and lives devoted to something other than self. Many go unnoticed, because there are so many, and always have been. One is Martha Berry, born in 1865, a teacher who started a school for poor kids in 1902.
Christian, Berry lived to teach – and comfort – kids. She loved to write, evidenced by a considerable archive at what is now Berry College, which itself grew from acts of giving – by Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Ellen Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson.
This educator and comforter was more a purveyor of hope than a scholar, but her efforts recollect a spirit that once existed across the country – quickness to give time, understanding the fragility of life, and doing all we can to better the world. The wind beneath her wings, self-evidently, was her faith.
All this is a prelude for a simple act, modest as it is, that seems somehow important – just worth passing along. Shortly before Berry founded her school, a man about whom little is known, named A.L. Frink, wrote a poem (1901). In 1936, when a student died, Berry sent it to the grieving family.
While her letter to the family is handwritten, the poem was typed, and upon recently experiencing a death in my family, a friend of a friend sent the poem along, just a reminder of how timeless hope, giving, living, dying, and the foundations of human existence, including the power of firm faith, are.
The poem, in case you have never read it, speaks to the beauty in this life, and the beauty beyond this life. It is entitled “The Rose Beyond the Wall.” In a time racked by willfulness, ugliness, cynicism, and greed, this gem reflects a sentiment we naturally forget, and often need.
“Near a shady wall a rose once grew,
Budded and blossomed in God’s free light,
Watered and fed by morning dew,
Shedding its sweetness day and night.
“As it grew and blossomed fair and tall,
Slowly rising to loftier height,
It came to a crevice in the wall
Through which there shone a beam of light.
“Onward it crept with added strength
With never a thought of fear or pride,
It followed the light through the crevice’s length
And unfolded itself on the other side.
“The light, the dew, the broadening view
Were found the same as they were before,
And it lost itself in beauties new,
Breathing its fragrance more and more.
“Shall claim of death cause us to grieve
And make our courage faint and fall?
Nay! Let us faith and hope receive:
The rose still grows beyond the wall,
“Scattering fragrance far and wide
Just as it did in days of yore,
Just as it did on the other side,
Just as it will forevermore.”
How the family received that poem, offered by the pioneering teacher, quick to hear, quick to comfort, is a mystery of history, one this column will not resolve. But that the poem has lasted this long, done such good, lingers and lifts as it well should, is a testament to roses and stems, and to the enduring power of hidden gems.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
