One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all ben 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 his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up the next day
By a lone dog that 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 old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out
And dodges and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But 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.
The forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane 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 thus, 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 rout
Followed this zigzag calf about,
And o'er his crooked journey went
the traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
by one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day
For thus such reverence is lent
to well established precedent.
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.