Jack Cornstalk In His Teens

“If not in the Garden, he had in the ark, To neither the beasts’ nor the passengers’ joy. Full many a boyish and monkeyish lark, The sandy-complexioned, the freckle-faced boy. And down through the ages he rattles the drums, While armies and nations each other destroy; The century goes, and the century comes But he lives on forever, the freckle-faced boy. All over the world are the lands of his birth; And when Time and Transgression this planet destroy He will come to advise the last man on earth The fatherly, chummy, the freckle-faced boy.”