free-verse52 lines
Travel.
by William McKendree Carleton[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]
NOVEMBER 1, 18 - .
It's quite the thing to "travel" nowadays
(Although I do not think it always pays),
And see if distant ground in general looks
As mentioned in the papers and in books.
I find, in sifting what few facts I know,
Three ways of realizing things are so:
First, when you're told them in such trusty shape
That square belief isn't easy to escape.
(There's lots of people - this town wouldn't hold them -
Who don't know much excepting what is told them.)
Second, what you've put on some mental shelf,
By having seen and understood yourself.
(How well we know things witnessed, largely lies
On how much brain there is behind our eyes.)
The third way is the surest and the best
(Though sometimes painful, it must be confessed):
It's where a truth has whipped the earth with you,
Until you feel, from head to foot, 'tis true.
I think, sometimes, when all is said and done,
Feeling is all the senses joined in one.
We're going to travel! - not so very far
As our new friends, the Fitzcumnoodles, are,
Who cannot read their social title's clear
Unless they ride twelve thousand miles a year,
(I told them, with a philosophic smile,
That travelling shouldn't be measured by the mile.)
But we shall take a little trip, to-morrow,
With some spare time that wife's contrived to borrow,
To where George Washington laid out a town
That several centuries won't see tumbled down!
A city which, with all the sneaking sinners
That come down there to steal their daily dinners,
And all the human insects hovering nigh,
Such as swarm thick wherever good things lie,
And spite of all the bad weeds growing round,
Has always some good folks upon the ground,
And will be head-piece of the greatest nation
That ever helped spruce up the Lord's plantation.
The Fitzcumnoodles, through their daughter Maud,
Inform us that we ought to go abroad;
The Clancdenancies, we have lately learned,
From an extended trip have just returned;
And so my eldest daughter, Isabel,
Who knows Miss Clanc, etc., very well,
Called on her in the progress of a walk,
And had a pleasant little travel-talk;
And after coming home misspent her time
In putting what she heard there into rhyme
And - lost it - not by accident, I fear;
I'll paste the "conversation" right in here: