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
behind he left this trail,
And
thereon hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone
dog that passed that way,
And then a wise bell-weather
sheep
Pursued that trail o’er dale and
steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good
bell-weathers 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 dodged
and turned and bent about,
And
uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ‘twas
such a crooked path;
But
still they follow—do not laugh—
The
first migrations of that calf.
The forest 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 that burning sun,
And traveled some
three miles in one.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The
village road became a street,
And this,
before men were aware,
A city’s
crowded thoroughfare.
And soon
a central street was this
In a renowned
metropolis;
And men two centuries
and a half
Followed
the wanderings of this calf.
Each day a hundred thousand strong
Followed
this zigzag calf along;
And o’er
his crooked journey went
The
traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand
men were led
By one poor calf, three centuries
dead.
For just such reverence is lent
To 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 paths 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 paths pursue,
To
keep the paths that others do,
They keep
the path a sacred grove
Along which
all their lives they move
And
how the wise old wood-gods laugh, [sic]
Who saw the first primeval calf.
(Author unknown)
