A while back I ran across this little poem by Samuel Foss. Foss, who was born in 1858 and died in 1911, was an American librarian and poet whose works included The House by the Side of the Road and The Coming American.
The Calf Path
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.
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, bell-wether sheep
Pursued the 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.
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 wood-way stalked,
Because he wabbled 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 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 rout
Followed the 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 still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
You see, it is so hard to get out of the rut.
– Sam Moore
A painting by Charles Franklin Pierce, titled “The Cow Path.”