One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail, all beat askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then two 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 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 dodged, and turned, and beat 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.

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 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.

     . . . . .

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed a 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.
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 out and in, and forth and back,
And till their devious course pursue
To keep the path that others do.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach,
But I am not ordained to preach.