Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/93



Read at the farewell reception given to Rev. Robert Fulton, S. J., at Boston College Hall, Feb. 5, 1880.

KING once made a gallery of art,
 * With portraits of dead friends and living graced;

And at the end, 'neath curtains drawn apart,
 * An empty marble pedestal was placed.

Here, every day, the king would come, and pace
 * With eyes well-pleased along the statued hall;

But, ere he left, he turned with saddened face,
 * And mused before the curtained pedestal.

And once a courtier asked him why he kept
 * The shadowed niche to fill his heart with dole;

"For absent friends," the monarch said, and wept;
 * "There still must be one absent to the soul."