The Calf Path

I tripped over this and it was too good to pass up. For all who feel they are winding down an insane path made by those before...JUMP SHIP!!! Take the road less traveled! I can say this because I need to follow my own advice of course! It's been too long since I've posted and this poem explains why :)

If you've never seen a calf path first hand you may not actually get the irony of the poem. Just another nod to my roots ;)

THE CALF-PATH

By Samuel Walter Foss

I

One day, through the primeval wood

A calf walked home, as good calves should,

And 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 his trail,

And thereby hangs my moral tale.

II

The trail was taken up next day

By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bell-wether sheep

Pursued that trail o’er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him, too,

As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade,

Through those old woods, a path was made;

III

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 followed—do not laugh—

The first migrations of that calf,

And through this winding woodway stalked,

Because he wobbled when he walked.

IV

This 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 for a century and a half

Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

V

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.

VI

Each day a hundred thousand rout

Followed this zigzag calf about,

And o’er this crooked journey went

The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led

By one calf near three centuries dead.

They follow still his crooked way

And lose one hundred years a day;

For thus such reverence is lent

To well-established precedent.

VII

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 a beaten track,

And out and in, 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 wise old wood gods laugh,

Who saw the footprints of that calf!

Ah! Many things this tale might teach,

But I am not ordained to preach.