“The Old Marlborough Road”
by Henry D. Thoreau 

         Where they once dug for money,
         But never found any;
         Where sometimes Martial Miles
         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.
       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. 

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A Note on the Text:

• Source: Excursions and Poems "Walking"  [The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. 214-216]

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