James Whitcomb Riley

A Worn

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.
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