A Worn-Out Pencil. (Rhymes of Rainy Days)

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.