On the Sale of My Farm by Robert Frost 1874 – 1963

Well-away and be it so,
To the stranger let them go.
Even cheerfully I yield
Pasture, orchard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.

Paul Theroux 1941

Novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). He went to the University of Massachusetts, which he said looked like it was made out of poison ivy and Tupperware, and dropped his pre-med plans to become an English major. After college, he went into the Peace Corps in Malawi, but he was thrown out for helping a poet who was a political opponent of the government and had escaped to Uganda. So Theroux went to Uganda himself, and the poet got him a job at Makerere University in Kampala, the capital city. And it was there that he met the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who was a visiting professor at the university, and became Theroux's mentor and friend for the next 30 years. Theroux started publishing novels, the first few set in Africa, including Waldo (1967) and Jungle Lovers (1971), and then Saint Jack (1973), about Singapore, where he taught for a few years. He went back to England, wrote a novel, dropped the manuscript off with his publisher, and that same day, he left for an epic journey from London to Tokyo and back again, all by train. He wrote about his experience in The Great Railway Bazaar (1975),his first travel book, which was also his first best-seller.

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Open Road by Walt Whitman 1819 - 1892

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)

___________________
City of Orgies

City of orgies walks and joys,
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one
        day make you illustrious,
Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your
        spectacles, repay me,
Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at
        the wharves,
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows
        with goods in them,
Nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the
        soiree or feast;
Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and
        swift flash of eyes offering me love,
Offering response to my own—these repay me,
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.