Page:Poems Eckley.djvu/24

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MY FIRST STATUE. 

(A THOUGHT.) "And their works do follow them."

AND can it be, when I am dead,
And these hands are stiff and cold;
This the thought of a Summer's day,
May live on to years untold?

A thought immortalized in stone,
That born in the silent soul,
Was nursed unseen till it sprang to life,
And grew 'neath a sculptor's tool.

A solemn truth—a ghostly train
Follows the life of the dead;
Shadows of works, the good, the ill,
Words spoken, and words unsaid.

Would we could live, that all our thoughts,
Sculptur'd in marble, or writ,
Were beacons unclouded to those who would seek
Our tomb that their lamps may be lit.