At the Old “Gool”
“Ten, ten and a double ten, forty-five and then fifteen!”
Stand you here, old friend of mine, close your eyes the while you lean
Your silvered hair against the wood that’s silvered too, by sun and rain,
—The butt of storms as well as we,—old aliens crawling back to Maine.
The driving sleet, the drifting snows have filched away the vivid red
That matched, as I remember it, the flaming top-
knot on your head.
And this—so gaunt, so bent, so small—it seems, alas, a wooden ghost
Of what it was when it was “gool”: the school-
house’s old red hitching-post!
And ah, old friend, to lean your brow upon its crest you have to stoop;
—You had to stretch to reach its top in those old days of hide-and-coop.
“Ten, ten and a double ten,”
That’s the way we counted then;
—Counted hundreds rapidly,
Begged the happy days to flee.
Moments were not precious then.
What we hoard to-day as men,
Then we flung in careless way;
Counting life as when at play;
“Blinding” at the old red post,
We strove to see who’d count the most.
“Forty-five and then fifteen,—”
Lavish then: ah, now we glean
On our bended knees as men
What we flung uncounted then.
Friend, old friend, the past troops back
With all its smiles and all its sighs,
When I was “It,”
And the world was lit
By the star-shine of two soft brown eyes.
“Ten, ten, and a double ten, forty-five and then fifteen!”
That talisman of boyhood days has brought a sorrow that is keen.
And yet there’s joy along with pain; let me bow my head here too,
And here with brow upon this wood I’ll tell you what you never knew.
You’ve asked me many times, old friend, the secret of an unwed life;
I’ll tell you now: I loved but once; that girl loved you; she was your wife.
I loved her in those boyhood days, but in Life’s game of counting out
Fate’s happy finger stretched to you, and I—
poor awkward, bashful lout—
Just stepped aside. But ’twas all right! I’m not the sort to curse and whine,
My joy has been that she was yours, so long as she could not be mine.
—My joy, old friend, is now to say, as here we clasp this worn old post,
There is no heart-burn in my past, no shimmer of a jealous ghost.
For boyhood’s lesson taught me this: ’Tis only some egregious fool
Who rails at Fate and storms the skies because some better man “tags gool.”
I’ve been content to stand there, friend, while one by one the eager troop
Of boyhood’s chums have won their goal in Life’s more earnest hide-and-coop.
Thank God, old chum, we still clasp hands and pledge again our boyhood ties.
Though I’ve been “It,”
And your world is lit
By the star-shine of her soft brown eyes.