[Gutenberg 55342] • Pine Tree Ballads / Rhymed Stories of Unplaned Human Natur' up in Maine

Slowly the toil-cramped, gnarled old fist

Wrought at the sheet with a rasping pen;

Halted with tremulous quirk and twist,

Staggered, and then went on again.

The wan sun peeped through the wee patched

pane

And checkered the floor where the pale

beams shone

In a quaint old kitchen up in Maine,

With an old man writing there alone.

And the pen wrought on and the head drooped

low

And a tear plashed down on the rusted pen,

As it traced a verse of the long ago

That his grief had brought to his heart

again.