Abel Melveny looks back late in life at all the farm equipment he bought and never really used. Without sheds or purpose, the machines sat out in the weather, rusting and falling apart. The poem’s quiet sadness comes from his growing clarity: as he watches one fine, once-varnished mill now stripped of paint, he recognizes himself. He was capable, ready, even eager, but life never put him to work. There is no anger here, just a slow, elegiac recognition of waste. The mood is solitary and reflective, like a man at a window realizing that he and his machines share the same fate—usefulness undone by time and neglect.
Abel Melveny — Summary
I bought every kind of machine that’s known— Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers, Mills and rakes and ploughs 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.