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.