• Author: Detroit Free Press
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 4 11 1917
• Tags:
• poetry
• Detroit Free Press

THE BOY THAT WAS When the hair about the temples starts to show the signs of gray, And a fellow realizes that he's wandering far away From the pleasures of his boyhood and his youth and never more Will know the joy of laughter as he did in days of yore, Oh, it's then he starts to thinking of a stubby little lad With a face as brown as berries and a soul supremely glad. When a gray-haired dreamer wanders down the lanes of memory And forgets the living present for the time of "used to be," He takes off his shoes and stockings, and he throws his coat away, And he's free from all restrictions, rules of manly play. He may be in tattered garments, but bareheaded in the sun He forgets his proud successes and the riches he has won. save the Oh, there's not a man that liveth but would give his all to be The stubby little fellow that in dreamland he can see, And the splendors that surround him and the joys about him spread Only seem to rise to taunt him with the boyhood that has fled. When the hair about the temples starts to show time's silver stain, Then the richest man that's living yearns to be a boy again. —Detroit Free Press.