alas, a wooden ghost
Of what it was when it was “gool”: the school-
house’s old red hitching-post!
And ah, old friend, to lean your brow upon its
crest you have to stoop;
—You had to stretch to reach its top in those
old days of hide-and-coop.
“Ten, ten and a double ten,”
That’s the way we counted then;
—Counted hundreds rapidly,