Sixty years my cup are brimming
Since at Newark I was faring;
There I learned some skating, swimming,
And perhaps a little swearing;
There I dreamed some small girl winning,
Though afraid to see her squinting—
It was puberty beginning
Like the bushes' early tinting.

Ever truant, heart is turning,
Ever wayward, fancy flighting,
White Clay Creek was more than learning
And the Playhouse best for fighting;
In the old annex we stumbled
When its one banjo was started,
Up the tavern fence we tumbled
When the equine nuptials started.

Tower the northern hills with high lights,
Storm clouds o'er our level staples;
Students, townfolks, in the twilights
Make low whispers, like our maples
Two wires, like the reins on horses,
Through the still street, roosting sparrows,
Guide the telegraph of Morse's
Like dead Indians' bows and arrows.

How amid good boys' derision
On a fence rail he was crated
When some son of Abolition
Slavery would have debated!
College seniors quick at figures,
Patriotic in their sporting,
Fought free-fisted, free-State niggers,
If they crossed the line a-courting.

Who could study when fox hunting
Back of Herdman's hostel sounded?
Or, Commencement time confronting,
Young divines each other pounded?
College widows, chancing lesser
As the mellow Annos hastened,
Wed at last some old professor,
With the world's perspective chastened.

Nothing happened but a tipsy
Scion frequently suspended,
Or encamped nearby a gipsy
Fortune teller, nymphs attended;
Days went on with scarce a caper
As our paper mill, the hummer,
Folded down the sheets of paper
Like the white days before summer.

At the railroad, past our seeing,
Great events went past a-flying;
Locomotives flagged for being,
Craped for statesmen lately dying;
There a Misses' seminary
Our gallants gave oft a rumpus,
Passing notes of tender query,
Fluttering heartstrings like a compass.

And the Tangent Stone to poet
Seemed so mystic, we agree
Somebody interr'd below it
Made the devil's boundary;
Shakespeare's mill the miller knew not
He of Shakespeare was an heir;
Theatres the jurists do not
Let perform in Delaware!

Yet, from this want of ideal
And these instincts, hard and blind,
Teachers patient, earnest, real,
Slowly formed the lines of Mind;
And great public schools attending
In great cities, yet to be,
Newark boys had long a mending
From the old Shoe Factory!