One day
through the primeval wood, a calf walked home, as good
calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew, a crooked trail as all
calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled, and I infer the
calf is dead.
But still he left behind this trail, and thereby hangs my
moral tale.
The trail
was taken up; next day, by a lone dog hat passed that way;
And then a wise bellwether sheep, pursued the trail o'er
vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too, as good bellwethers
always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade, through those
woods a path was made.
And many
men wound in and out, and dodged and turned and bend
about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath, because 'twas such a
crooked path;
And still they followed--do not laugh--the first
migrations of that calf.
And
through this winding wood-way stalked, because he wobbled
when he walked.
This forest patch became a lane, that bent and turned and
turned again;
This crooked land became a road, where many a poor horse
with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun, and traveled some three
miles in one.
And thus a
century and a half, they trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet, the road became a
village street;
And this, before men were aware, a city's crowded
thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this, of a renowned
metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half trod, in the footsteps of
that calf.
Each day a
hundred thousand men, follow this zigzag calf again,
And o'er his crooked journey went, the traffic of a
continent.
A hundred thousand men were led, by one lost calf near
three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way, and lost one hundred
years a day;
For thus such a reverence is lent, to a well-established
precedent.
A moral
lesson this might teach, were I ordained and called to
preach;
For men are prone to go it blind, along the calf-path of
the mind,
And work away from sun to sun, to do what other men have
done.
They follow in the beaten track, and in and out, and forth
and back,
And still their devious course pursue, to keep the path
that others do.
They keep
the path a sacred groove, along which all their lives they
move;
But how the old wood-gods laugh, who first saw the
primeval calf.
Ah, may things this tale might teach - but I am not
ordained to preach.
Author - Sam Walter Foss