"And when he played, the atmosphere
Was filled with magic, and the ear
Caught echoes of that Harp of Gold...
    – Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn







2.

With night of the yearly harvest
now past and the leaves of the forest
blown down onto the rich
green grass jewels of yellows,
coins of golden ochres, color
the old Middle Post Road to Boston.
By way of the Bowery New York
north to the Wayside Sudbury
is the story of the post mail riders
as they rode, we're sure, in earnest,
through the hundreds of colonial
towns, over the torchlit bridges
and through the fog bottom hollows.
At first, then, you must imagine
the sight of the road, gravel and torn.
To the traveller by hoof or foot,
in some places, it had started
no wider than than broad hips
by that venerable tribe Pequot.