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I AM TASTIN' O' THE OLD WOLF SPRING 1911
In a town of New Virginia, generations come and go
And the great Ohio River has its ceaseless onward flow;
There's a hillside by the highway where the weary stranger sleeps
In the shadow of an oak tree while the summer sunshine peeps
In patches and the Red Wings flash and sing.
And the crystal water trickles in the Old Wolf Spring.
If the stranger or the Native in his journey, hard and long,
Stops awhile and listens to the murmuring water's song;
Kneels above the old spring's mirror, bends him low to touch his lips
To the hidden, flowing Fountain's precious liquid dips,
Though the wander lust may call him, with alure that seems to cling
He will ever journey homeward to the Old Wolf Spring.
So they told us in our boyhood, but we did not understand
'Till we journeyed, far and lonely from our own boy wonderland;
So they told us in our boyhood, but we never thought 'twas true
Though the old Grandfather told me, same as oft he's told to you,
That you couldn't wander long from home, there wasn't such a thing
If ever you had tasted o' the Old Wolf Spring.
So to-day amid the tumult of the city's rush and roar
With the stress of life about me, it comes to me o'er and o'er:
It's the lure and the calling of my olden boyhood home
And it holds me, clings, and folds me fast, wherever I may roam,
It's the home-ways, and the boy-days and the birds that flash and sing;
And I'm tastin' o' the Old Wolf Spring!"
[Written in 1911 and published as The Old Wolf Spring and Other Home Poems, by the Schoolcraft Print Shop at East Greenwich Academy, East Greenwich, Rhode Island.]
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