End of the Wilderness Road

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road,
and our past is not a dead past,
but still lives in us.

Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves,
the wild outside.

We live in the civilization they created,
but within us the wilderness still lingers.

What they dreamed, we live,
and what they lived, we dream.

T.K. Whipple (1890-1939) . . .
as quoted by Mike Brown in the Rockdale Reporter . . .
and as quoted by Larry McMurtry
in his epigraph to Lonesome Dove

The Road Not Taken

'Tis now 2 a.m. . . . on the morning of the anniversary of the date on which my cousin, Robert Lee Frost, was born . . . I'm watching re-runs of Fame from 1984 . . . and they just recited the following poem on the show . . .

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost
26 March 1874 ~ 29 January 1963

Afternoon in February

  The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.


The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;


While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.


The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;


Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
27 February 1807 - 24 March 1882

P.S. Longfellow is my 5th cousin 6 times removed, i.e., my 10th great-grandmother, Elizabeth (Burbage) Wiswall (abt.1610 - aft.1664), is his 4th great-grandmother. My 10th great-grandfather, Thomas Wiswall (bef.1601 - 1683), is his 4th great-grandfather.

A Gaelic Blessing

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

A Gaelic Blessing --
from Taylor's Memorial Service