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James Whitcomb Riley - A Worn-Out Pencil
Work rating: Low

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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