Ticks: Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis

From left to right: larvae, nymph, adult male, adult female.
Nymphs and adult females are the vectors for human infection.
Ticks get on your shoes, socks or legs when you brush against
vegetation. Ticks do not drop from above. The CDC website
recommends chemical repellants, also how to do a tick check
and how to wash and dry clothes to kill ticks.

June and July are the prime months for contracting a tick-borne disease. During these months the vector is the nymph stage, which is about the size of a poppy seed. There is a lessening incidence in August, September and further into fall and winter, as the vector becomes the more easily seen adult female tick (the size of a small apple seed), and also because people spend less time outdoors with the onset of colder weather.

An observation here: the term 'bite' is not descriptive. If not detected, a nymph will latch on for 3-4 days for a blood meal before dropping off; adult females stay attached for 7-10 days. Adult males are not on you for a meal. Rather, they are wandering around looking to find and fertilize a female. This meet-and-mate part of the tick's life cycle is the reason that deer are integral to a region harboring a serious tick disease problem. Small mammals (mice, chipmunks, etc.) are vectors for the larval and nymph stages to become infected, but a large mammal species such as deer is essential for the mating and final blood meal that allows the fertilized adult female tick to lay up to 3,000 eggs.    

Lyme, Anaplasmosis and Babesiosis are the big three for New England, but the full count for tick-borne diseases now overtops a dozen. More information on tick-vector diseases can be seen as the Centers for Disease Control website: http://www.cdc.gov/ticks/. The CDC has great information on the tick diseases, and also on practical matters such as how to avoid getting bitten by a tick, and what to do once you have been bitten.

Lyme starts subtle. If the stricken person missed the actual bite, then the first sign is often but not always the signature "bull's eye" rash. Moderate fever, chills, fatigue, muscle ache and a headache may accompany the rash. Only months after the rash and the initial set of symptoms are gone is there a possibility that really bad consequences set in: arthritis, partial facial paralysis, meningitis, limb weakness, and so forth.

Anaplasmosis is not subtle. The symptoms are more akin to being run over by a car, having it circle around to hit you again, and then one more time to park on your head. Some 7 to 10 days after the bite the symptoms arrive all at once: extreme fatigue, high fever, uncontrollable shivering alternating with profuse sweating, night sweats, headache, nausea, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, weight loss, muscle pain, cough, mental confusion, and extreme fatigue. Really extreme.

Babesiosis is not subtle. Symptoms, arriving 10-30 days after being host to a tick, are akin to those of Anaplasmosis, plus it destroys red blood cells and platelets. From the latest data published by the CDC, Massachusetts has more cases of Babesiosis than any other state.

The CDC uses the term "malaise," but this does not convey the soul-crushing lethargy of either of these full-speed infections. Not everyone exhibits all the symptoms, and many of these symptoms overlap with what people expect if they have the flu, causing many people to delay seeking a medical evaluation, or doing so, getting a misdiagnosis.

Actually, these days, diagnosis and treatment are straightforward. Do you have some or all of that litany of symptoms, especially fever and fatigue? Were you in any place a week or four ago where there might have been ticks? That's it. A blood sample will be taken, but especially early in the course of the infection the test results can be false negative (says you don't, but you do). Standard medical practice is to start antibiotic treatment immediately. Treatment should never be delayed until the lab results are back. These days, there is an assumption that more than one disease is transmitted from the same tick, so for Babesiosis, doctors may prescribe multiple antibiotics.

Neither casual contact nor intimate sexual contact will pass on any of these diseases, but receiving a blood transfusion has been a confirmed vector. There are no laboratory screening tests to verify that donated blood is not infected. 

Not treating infections in a timely fashion can have very serious consequences. Delayed treatment may require hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics. Especially in older or immuno-compromised people there are risks of compromised breathing, kidney failure, nerve damage and death. A practical point - your guests can contact a tick disease here, then travel to regions where doctors may not have tick disease awareness. Your parting words might include "Safe travels, and if you develop a rash or become ill, tell your doctor you were in tick territory."

Wolves Repopulate Massachusetts - NOT!

Before Europeans arrived in North America, what is now the 48 contiguous states, i.e., all but Alaska and Hawaii, was home to an estimated 250,000 wolves. And 10 to 20 million deer. Nowadays the estimates are 5,500 wolves, and 25 to 30 million deer. There has been lobbying to restore wolves to the east, much as was done for bald eagles, but no action expected in the near, middle or distant future. Because it is one thing to restore the national symbol, and another to have the big, bad wolf wandering about the Berkshires.  

The anti-wolf movement started ten years after the Mayflower landed. In 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Colony approved a bounty for each wolf killed. Other colonies followed suit, at times switching back and forth between bounties paid to anyone and professional hunter/trappers. The first cause for this animosity was to stop depredation of domestic animals - cattle, sheep and pigs. Wolves had been eradicated in England and Scotland long before colonization to the Americas, so while the settlers had folklore of the depredations of wolves, actually losing livestock was a rude jolt.

By 1840 there were no more wolves in Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau had lamented that of New England's wild life, nothing larger than foxes remained. Wolf extirpation followed in neighboring states, so by 1900 there were no more wolves in New England.

The practice of killing wolves to make land safer for pastured sheep and cows shifted west as Americans moved west. In time, a second cause evolved. The early decades of colonization treated wildlife as an inexhaustible resource. Deer were hunted for family consumption, but also for the market for meat that grew as cities grew. In time, game became scarce, hunting for market was banned and the concept of licensed sport hunting matured. Wolves were hunted, trapped and poisoned so there would be more deer and elk to be shot for sport. Anti-predator attitudes extended to mountain lions and coyotes.  

What was learned, slowly, was that without apex predators, herbivores will multiply to beyond what the greenscape can support. Starting in 1994, a great experiment was conducted in and around Yellowstone National Park. Thirty wolves were trapped in Canada and released in the Park. Within ten years the population peaked at approximately 300. It has since declined to half that due to pack-to-pack competition for territory and out-migration. The elk population declined from 20,000 to what may be a stable 5,000. Mule deer, moose and bison populations showed little change. Spending by hunters is way down, but is more than compensated by wolf-related tourism. 

There have been other interesting consequences. The coyote population has been halved, but the grizzly bear and cougar populations stayed stable. Bald eagles and ravens - scavengers at wolfkills - increased in number. With the end of over-grazing by elk much plant life recovered, bringing biodiversity.

The concept of "ecology of fear" came out of this experiment. When animals continuously fear predators, behavior changes. More time spent on surveillance and staying nearer to safe havens means less time eating. Less time eating slows growth and reproductive success. Locally, our examples of animals without fear include turkeys and geese.       

Looks like lunch! (Internet download, click on photo to enlarge.)

There are proposals to restore wolves to upstate New York and northern Maine, which in time would result in populating surrounding regions. A big question: Will wolves attack people?  Nineteenth century newspaper accounts describe wolf packs attacking and eating children, adults, even armed adults who managed to kill some of the wolves before dying. Wolf attacks on humans are very rare now, but the main cause is that wolves are rare. What is being reported are increasing numbers of attacks on dogs. Hunters that use off-leash dogs for licensed bear hunting are reporting dog kills in Idaho, Wisconsin and other states. Pet dogs have been taken in parks in Minnesota.

There is an argument for a net benefit from restoring wolves to the east. Currently, 150-200 people die each year from vehicle collisions with deer. Restoring wolves would reduce that number, perhaps at the cost of 1-2 deaths per year from wolf attacks. Logical? Yes. Emotionally reassuring? No. One solution would to be equip a wolf or two per wolfpack with a GPS device and have a wolf app on your smart phone.

Not in the newspaper column: In 2007 a wolf was shot in Shelburne, Massachusetts, after reports of an animal killing sheep and lambs. DNA testing confirmed the 85 pound male animal as a gray wolf. The nearest known wild wolf population was in Canada, some 350 miles away. Back in elk country, the estimates are that wolf packs will kill 22 elk or other large ungulates per wolf per year. Deer being much smaller, it could mean more than 50 deer per wolf per year! Meanwhile, there have been scores if not hundreds of documented coyote attacks on humans, sometimes by rabid animals and sometimes not. Two attacks have resulted in deaths - a three year old child (1981), and a 19 year old woman (2009). Rabies more commonly affects raccoons, skunks and foxes, but can cross to coyotes. A common sign of rabies is a loss of fear of natural predators (and humans), abnormal behavior, such as being active during daylight hours for a species typically nocturnal, and aggressive biting.      

Bald Eagles Repopulate Massachusetts

Bald eagles don't have to be fast, only strong. The majority of their diet is either fish or stuff already dead, competing in the latter situation with vultures, ravens and crows. Adults weigh 9-13 pounds (females are larger than males), and can easily lift a 3-5 pound fish out of the water. An eagle that ends up in the water - perhaps after grasping a too-large fish - can take off from the water's surface. Bald eagles also prey on young Canada geese, ducks and small mammals. And steal food from other predators, such as ospreys.

Bald eagle, Lake Boon 2011 (Martin French)

Bald eagles are in the genus Haliaeetus, common name sea eagles, of which the Steller's Sea Eagle* is the largest. Of the some 60 eagle species worldwide, our bald eagle does not make the top five for weight or wingspan. All eagle species are long-lived. For the bald eagle, lifespan in the wild often exceeds 20 years. In captivity, lifespan has been known to exceed 50 years.

During nesting season the mated pair are both involved in egg-sitting and bring food to the young - typically two - eaglets. The parents each need close to a pound of food per day, and the growing eaglets not much less, so an adequate food supply is essential to raising a family    

According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, there were 56 nesting pairs of eagles in the state in 2016, up from 51 the year before. The process of restoring eagles to this state began in 1982. Over a six year period, 41 eagle chicks were collected in Canada and released in the Quabbin Reservoir area. The chicks fledged, i.e., reached flying age, at 11 to 12 weeks. Most survived the next critical period of six weeks during which hunting, flying (and landing) skills were improving. In a normal situation the young chicks would have been fed every 4 to 5 hours by their parents, but in this relocation program the human caregivers wore a hand puppet that looked like an adult eagle's head. The effort to restore eagles to Massachusetts was part of the federally funded Northern States Bald Eagle Recovery Plan. 

Bald eagle with a fish (Internet photo). Click on photos to enlarge

The effort worked. Young eagles take four to five years to reach sexually mature adulthood, including a slow transition from juvenile all-brown tones to adult coloration, during which time they wander hundred of miles but tend to return to the general area where they were born to seek a mate and start raising families. By 1989 the relocated eagles were starting to nest in the Quabbin region. Since then, nesting sites have been spreading east and west. The nearest to us is in Framingham. Any local eagle sightings are of wanderers - either juveniles that have not yet paired up or adults during the non-nesting part of the year, which runs from mid-July to mid-January.

Juvenile bald eagle lacks the white feathered head and  tail,
and beak has not yet turned yellow. (Internet photo)

In Colonial times, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 bald eagles populated what would become the continental United States, i.e., excluding Alaska and Hawaii. But by the 1970s, through a combination of hunting, loss of habitat and the unexpected effects of DDT spraying for mosquitoes, the number of nesting pairs had dropped to under 500. Through a combination of banning of DDT in 1972, the Endangered Species Act (1973) and the relocation programs, nesting pairs now exceed 10,000 and the species is no longer considered endangered. It is still protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.**

Lead poisoning continues to be an issue. The most significant hazard to wildlife is through direct ingestion of spent lead shot and bullets, lost fishing sinkers, or through consumption of prey containing lead shot or bullet fragments. While lead was federally banned for waterfowl hunting in 1991, its use in ammunition for other hunting remains widespread.

For many years, I half-remembered, or perhaps remembered half, of a short poem about birds of prey. While not specifically about bald eagles, it does capture a predator's sudden brutality. As remembered:

In the woods, I heard a scream.

Whether it was bird of prey

   or prey of bird,

I do not know, I only heard.

And then, while working on this column, I remembered the book I had read it in. So, as actually written:

BY NIGHT

After midnight I heard a scream.

I was awake, it was no dream.

But whether it was bird of prey

Or prey of bird I could not say.

I never heard that sound by day.

   - Robert Francis

*Steller's Sea Eagle: Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1946) was a naturalist on a Russian expedition to the Bering Sea in 1740. This eagle is 1.5 times the weight of the bald eagle. Adult females are known to top 20 pounds. Diet is mostly fish. In addition to the sea eagle, other species bearing his name are the Steller's Jay, Steller's Sea Lion, and Steller's Sea Cow. The last, a relative of manatees and dugongs, was hunted to extinction within decades after Steller's identification of the species.

Adult Golden Eagle (Internet download)

**The Golden Eagle is native to North America, but unlike the Bald Eagle, not limited to North America. Golden Eagles prey primarily on small mammals, and prefer open plains and mountains to densely wooded terrain. But they do wander east as far as Massachusetts, and can be mistaken for immature Bald Eagles. The original federal Act (1940) protected only Bald Eagles, but was extended to cover Golden Eagles in 1962.  

Assabet River by Other Names

1830 map shows Elizabeth River as the
border between Stow and Sudbury

River exploration tends to start at a river's mouth and work upstream, with naming following. At a major branching a decision is needed - is one the river and the other a tributary? Or better to think of the situation as two branches of the river? The Nashua River flows into the Merrimack River in Nashua, New Hampshire; upriver it splits into North Nashua and South Nashua. River naming was once as simple for the Assabet.

When Concord was established in 1635 the land - purchased from Native Americans - was originally referred to as Musketaquid for "grassy plain," and perhaps also meaning the river, as another history translates Musketaquid as Reedy River. This was descriptive. Both north and south of nascent Concord the river was slow-moving, with a very wide flood plain. The colonists coveted the reedy marshland as meadow, fodder for cattle and horses.  

Upstream the river forked at Egg Rock. Concord maps from 1753 to as late as 1835 refer to the north branch as North River, or on some maps Concord NR. An echo of this naming is the present-day North Branch Road, near the Concord/Acton border and parallel to the Assabet River. Settlement did not expand up both rivers at the same pace. Sudbury was named a town in 1639. Meanwhile, surveyors described the territory along the other river as "meane land," not settled until Stow was a named town in 1683.  

An early name for the Assabet River. Click on photos to enlarge

In Stow the river's name was in flux, with various maps and documents reading Asibeth, Assabath, Elsabath, Elsibeth, Elizabeth, Assabett, Assabet... One map even had it as Stow River. There was a consensus in 1830 that Elizabeth Brook flowed into Elizabeth River into Concord River, but by 1856, when Middlesex county was being remapped in great detail, it was Assabet Brook flowing into the Assabet River, with the pre-Maynard community identified as Assabet Village. (Nowadays it is Elizabeth Brook into Assabet River.)    

There is a well-known quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne (1846) which when cited now usually has the "Assabet" spelling, but what he actually wrote was: "Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth..."

Native American name? No one
knows for sure. Or what it meant.

As for how "Ass-a-bet" came to be the name of a river - a mystery. Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. Our problem here is that various 19th century history attribute the origins to a Native American name, but if that is true, it would have been from the Nipmuc dialect of the Algonquian family of Indian languages. There is no resource to pursue this theory back to an original source. Supposed translations are to the reedy place, the miry place, or the backward flowing river place. A mire is more permanent - a marsh or bog - than a temporally fleeting muddy place. 'Backward flowing' is a reach. On infrequent occasions the Sudbury River, immediately upstream from the junction of the Sudbury and Assabet, flows backwards. This happens after heavy rain, and it happens because water from the steeper Assabet reaches the junction sooner than water from the flatter Sudbury. Place names are rarely for rare events, so this last theory feels unlikely.  

An alternative theory is that the various names of the river were corruptions of spelling of "Elizabeth." But it is more of a reach to go from this perfectly good person-name to Aisbeth or Assabath, both dating to late 1600s, than it is to consider all those Elizabeth-names as attempts to Anglicize the native name.

There are other examples of changeable naming. In southeast Stow, Bottomless Pond became Crystal Lake. In Harvard, Hell Pond became Hill Pond, became Mirror Lake. In early Sudbury documents the Sudbury River was referred to as the Great River, while at the same time the upper end from Framingham west was for decades called the Hopkinton River. And lest we forget, in 1902 the Town of Maynard almost changed its name to - Assabet.

Thoreau "The Old Marlborough Road"

Old Marlboro Road in Maynard, MA. Click to enlarge.
Maynard did not become a town until 1871, so the road
predates the town by several centuries.

This entry is about connecting Henry David Thoreau's poem "The Old Marlborough Road" to the factual people and places named. See below for final version of the poem. Marlborough is a Massachusetts town 16.5 miles from Concord.  Both towns date to the 1600s, so a road could be 'old' in 1850.

Thoreau created a lecture entitled "Walking," first delivered at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. He spoke on the topic close to a dozen times, revising the presentation as years passed, so it is referred to in some descriptions has having been written 1851-1860. As a published work, which includes the poem, "Walking" first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1862, shortly after his death. The entire essay is available at several websites, including: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/06/walking/304674/
https://www.walden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Walking-1.pdf 

What is unknown is whether the poem was ever part of the lecture presentations, or only added to the essay for publication. Research on this would require locating and transcribing lecture manuscripts. The Concord Public Library Special Collections does have Thoreau's handwritten manuscript of "Walking" as submitted for publication. The poem - in his sister's handwriting - has no mark-ups or amendments. (Thoreau was ill/dying from tuberculosis as he worked on this and other writings that were published posthumously. His sister helped by making clean copy for some parts of his marked up drafts). The manuscript does differ in a minor way from what was actually published: the poem's title and spelling throughout were "Old Marlboro Road."

An earlier version of the poem can be found as an 1850 journal entry with the title already set, but missing the first eight lines, and with extra lines, later cut. What in the final version are the important last four lines instead were located in the middle, just before "Nobody repairs it." The journal version of the poem can be found on line at various sites, including pages 54-56 of the Bradford Torrey edition of the journals, covering 1850 thru September 1851. See:

https://archive.org/details/writingsofhenryd08thorrich

Elsewhere, as recorded in Thoreau's journal on September 4, 1851, he and William Ellery Channing walked on parts of the old road to Marlborough as part of their trek to Boon's Pond. Thoreau mentions that he had walked in this general direction many times - he described it as a tendency to head west or southwest once stepping out his door - but not as far as the destination of that specific trek. He described the road to Marlborough as "little-frequented," and no more than a woodman's cart path. [Torrey edition, pp.452-462]

The beginning of OLD MARLBORO Road in Concord,
near Emerson Hospital. 

The road exists again, paved, and named Old Marlboro Road. It wends west from near Emerson Hospital, cuts across the north corner of Sudbury as Powers Road, continues as Old Marlboro Road in Maynard, where it ends at the east border of the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. Within the Refuge, it continues as a trail named Winterberry Way; then out the west site yclept Bruen Road, White Pond Road and finally Concord Road all the way to the center of Marlborough.

As to how old the road was, and why it had fallen into disuse, Marlborough officially became a town in 1660. By 1663, Sudbury records describe an intent to create a road to "Marlbrow." The road from Concord to Marlborough, across the northern part of Sudbury, became a major route for stagecoaches transporting farm produce, freight and people. From 1685 to 1815, Rice Tavern, Sudbury, was at the crossroads of the Concord-Marlborough and the Sudbury-Lancaster roads. But by Thoreau's time a new road had been built farther south. Rice Tavern had reverted to a farmhouse, torn down in 1942.  

While the theme of the poem is that by stepping out on disused/abandoned roads - as was already true of the old road to Marlborough in his day - you are in effect traveling on any road and every road, the poem also contains factual references specific to Thoreau's time and place. Martial Miles owned land near the road (Martial Mile's Swamp mentioned elsewhere in Journals). Elijah Wood (1790-1861) was a life-long resident of Concord, descendant of one of the founding families; his son, Elijah Wood, Jr. (1816-1882), was a contemporary of Thoreau. Why Thoreau wrote "And Elijah Wood/I fear for no good" is a mystery. Perhaps aware of Wood's pending death.

Elisha Dugan was a free Negro, never married, son of Thomas Dugan, an escaped slave who had become a landowner in Concord. The Dugan family history is described at length in Black Walden, by Elise Lemire. In the poem's context, "Close to the bone" would have meant in poverty/destitute.

"Not many there be/Who enter therein/Only the guests of the/Irishman Quin," Sudbury archives show James and Zana Quin on various town records (qualified voter, taxes). James, born in Ireland, died 1848. His wife died 1866. The house, on the old road to Marlborough may have gone to a son or relative, as an 1856 Middlesex county map shows Riley Quinn.

Possible that Thoreau passed this stone on his way from Concord to the start of
Old Marlborough Road. This is facing west, as the intersection of Route 62 and
and Old Road to Nine Acre Corner. Follow ORNAC across Route 2, then turn
right onto Old Marlboro before getting to  Emerson Hospital. The faint grooves
on the left face indicate this piece of granite was split and shaped by hand.

Granite markers: Thoreau's "Great guide-boards of stone" - were common then, and many still stand to this day. Some of these indicated town borders. Many Massachusetts towns have by-laws that require the Selectmen or their representatives to periodically confirm such stones' locations and status. Other reasons for a stone post would be to have directional arrows pointing toward towns, and perhaps mileage. One stone could serve both purposes.    

Esther Howe Wheeler's book, Nature - A Thoreau Country, (1965) has her circa 1940s photo of a large granite marker post besides the dirt road. The Concord Public Library Special Collections has a photo dated November 7, 1899, showing the same stone and calling it an Old Marlborough Road guide post. And yet more! The second (1892) edition of Old Concord: Her Highways and Byways, by Margaret Sidney (pen name of Harriet M. Stone), tells of visiting Martial Mile's House, passing by the remnants of the house of Irishman Quin, and taking her horse and carriage on the Old Marlborough Road, which she described as in poor repair. An artist's rendering in the book (pp. 176-178: https://archive.org/details/oldconcordherhig00sidn_0) shows the same stone marker as in the photographs. With a magnifying glass it is possible to discern "← 12 MARLBORO" and "→ 4 CONCORD" on one face of the stone. A recent drive-by found no stone marker at the road's boundary between Concord and Sudbury, which is four miles distant from the center of Concord.

The poem mentions Gourgas, Lee, Clark and Darby as Selectmen. Massachusetts towns elect men and women (only men back then) as Selectmen rather than electing a mayor. Francis Richard Gourgas was part of Concord government as Postmaster, Selectman and Town Clerk, also a Senator in the Massachusetts Legislature. Thoreau had surveyed land for him. Daniel Clark, Joseph Darby and Isaac S. Lee were identified in town annual reports as Selectmen serving prior to 1850 (first known date of poem, their names already included in that version).

The first two lines of the poem as published in 1862: 

       Where they once dug for money,

       But never found any;

Some interpreters took this as meaning people used to travel the road on business, which takes aim at the first line but elides the second. More likely Thoreau was referring to a Concord buried treasure legend.

In an 1856 journal entry, there is a sentence "On Money-Diggers’ Shore, much large yellow lily root washed up; that white root with white fibres and yellowish leaf buds." The text has no location, but the 1906 Gleason map of things Thoreau puts Money Diggers' Shore as squarely within Concord, on the west shore of the Sudbury River, near the start of Old Marlboro Road. Three other journal entries (1856, 1858, 1859) make mention of plants found growing on Money-Diggers' Hill without any clues as to location. A good guess is where Emerson Hospital is located.

Thoreau's Nov 5, 1854 journal entry has a description of the legend of pirate treasure buried near John Hosmer's hollow. That would be near the west shore of the Sudbury River, in Concord. Hosmer and a friend had come across a pit some six by six feet, and as deep. They explained to Thoreau that there were old stories of pirate treasure, and that people had been digging near the river for a hundred years. Thoreau revisited the treasure story in a December 1856 journal entry: "Am pleased to see the holes where men have dug for money, since they remind me that some are dreaming still like children, though of impracticable things - dreaming of finding money, and trying to put their dream into practice. It proves that men live Arabian nights and days still. I would they should have that kind of faith than none at all."

THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD (as published, 1862)

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.