A WORN-OUT PENCIL.

Welladay!

Here I lay

You at rest — all worn away,

O my pencil, to the tip

Of our old companionship!

Memory

Sighs to see

What you are, and used to be,

Looking backward to the time

When you wrote your earliest rhyme!—

When I sat

Filing at

Your first point, and dreaming that

Your initial song should be

Worthy of posterity.

With regret

I forget

If the song be living yet,

Yet remember, vaguely now,

It was honest, anyhow.

You have brought

Me a thought —

Truer yet was never taught,—

That the silent song is best,

And the unsung worthiest.

So if I,

When I die,

May as uncomplainingly

Drop aside as now you do,

Write of me, as I of you:—

Here lies one

Who begun

Life a-singing, heard of none;

And he died, satisfied,

With his dead songs by his side.