• Author: Detroit Free Press
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 9 5 1917
• Tags:
• poetry

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, save the rules of manly play. He may be in tattered garments, but bare- headed in the sun He forgets his proud successes and the riches he has won. Oh, there’s not a man that lives 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 begins to show time’s silver stain, Then the richest man that’s living yearns to be a boy again.

—Detroit Free Press.