Page:Excursions (1863) Thoreau.djvu/181

Rh Singly files,

And Elijah Wood,

I fear for no good:

No other man,

Save Elisha Dugan,—

O man of wild habits,

Partridges and rabbits,

Who hast no cares

Only to set snares,

Who liv'st all alone,

Close to the bone,

And where life is sweetest

Constantly eatest.

When the spring stirs my blood

With the instinct to travel,

I can get enough gravel

On the Old Marlborough Road.

Nobody repairs it,

For nobody wears it;

It is a living way,

As the Christians say.

Not many there be

Who enter therein,

Only the guests of the

Irishman Quin.

What is it, what is it,

But a direction out there,

And the bare possibility

Of going somewhere?

Great guide-boards of stone,

But travellers none;

Cenotaphs of the towns

Named on their crowns.

It is worth going to see

Where you might be.