Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/135

 all that first gave the name to the town, and more. Here are peaceful rivers meeting in rich meadows from which spring with the rising ground fruitful fields. Here men dwell in amity and keep singularly intact the beauty and thrift of a New England village of a century ago, though even here one can see wealth taking the place of prosperity and the pretentious ugliness of the modern attempt at Queen Anne architecture shouldering the quiet dignity of the old Colonial residences off the street. Here and there a little of the husk of the Concord of the Revolution remains, though somewhat sadly hemmed in. A simulacrum of the Concord Bridge still spans the flood, done in resonant cement, but here the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. Nor is his jealousy an odd one, for the rude bridge that arched the flood led somewhere. This echo of the triumph that has passed by drops him who would tread in the footsteps of heroes within the narrow bounds of an iron picket fence beyond which keep-off-the-grass signs doubly defend the way. In the presence of these the Minute Man seems superfluous.