Abel Melveny

I bought every kind of machine that's known —

Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,

Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers —

And all of them stood in the rain and sun,

Getting rusted, warped and battered,

For I had no sheds to store them in,

And no use for most of them.

And toward the last, when I thought it over,

There by my window, growing clearer

About myself, as my pulse slowed down,

And looked at one of the mills I bought —

Which I didn't have the slightest need of,

As things turned out, and I never ran —

A fine machine, once brightly varnished,

And eager to do its work,

Now with its paint washed off —

I saw myself as a good machine

That Life had never used.