I BOUGHT every kind of machine that's known -- Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, Mills and rakes and plows and threshers -- And all of them stood in the rain and sun, Getting rusted, warped and battered, For I had no sheds to store them in, And no use for most of them. And toward the last, when I thought it over, There by my window, growing clearer About myself, as my pulse slowed down, And looked at one of the mills I bought -- Which I didn't have the slightest need of, As things turned out, and I never ran -- A fine machine, once brightly varnished, And eager to do its work, Now with its paint washed off -- I saw myself as a good machine That Life had never used. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. CHARLES BLISS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS FISHERMAN IN SONGKHLA by KAREN SWENSON THERE IS NO NATURAL RELIGION (B) by WILLIAM BLAKE DEJECTION: AN ODE by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: 64 by PHILIP SIDNEY MAY MORNING by CELIA LEIGHTON THAXTER THE WILD GEESE by MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY ON SEEING AN OLD POET IN THE CAFE ROYAL by JOHN BETJEMAN THE GIAOUR; A FRAGMENT OF A TURKISH TALE by GEORGE GORDON BYRON |