Better Gutenberg
Free, beautifully formatted public-domain ebooks

The Janitor’s Boy and Other Poems

by Nathalia Crane

20 of 50 · Contents · Download EPUB

The Map Makers

There was a man who made a map
  Of all you see at night;
He made the moon and all the stars
  And comets in their flight.

He worked for twenty years or more
  And extra ink he bought,
And then he mapped the Milky Way
  As sort of an afterthought.

I read the story to Margaret,
  She said that it must be true,
For she herself could draw a map
  Of Ocean avenue.

She made a dot for Prospect Park,
  A blot for Sheepshead Bay,
And then she ruled a line between
  To show the right of way.

It took her just five minutes just,
  But I have my private fears,
That it isn’t quite up to the moon-man’s map,
  For it never took twenty years.

← Back to The Janitor’s Boy and Other Poems

Scroll to Top