Page:Excursions (1863) Thoreau.djvu/182

174 What king

Did the thing,

I am still wondering;

Set up how or when,

By what selectmen,

Gourgas or Lee,

Clark or Darby?

They 're a great endeavor

To be something forever;

Blank tablets of stone,

Where a traveller might groan,

And in one sentence

Grave all that is known;

Which another might read,

In his extreme need.

I know one or two

Lines that would do,

Literature that might stand

All over the land,

Which a man could remember

Till next December,

And read again in the spring,

After the thawing.

If with fancy unfurled

You leave your abode,

You may go round the world

By the Old Marlborough Road.

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a