Those other hands once held and guided you
Long before mine first felt your texture fine
Wrought the Beech log and fashioned you
Carved out your tapering mouth and set it true to line

Moulded your handle smooth with care and skill
Fitted the slotted wedge to hold the blade
Laid you new, finished on this bench to do his will
And on your polished end he carved his name and trade

Gone are those hands this many a year outworn
And in a quiet church yard gently laid
Beneath a cross of stone that tells where he was born
The number of his years, his name, his trade

Now you have passed to me to use and tend
My hands will hold you now with skill nor more nor less
Than those that held you first and at the end
They too will be outworn and laid with his at rest

And as I watch the curling shavings hurry through your gaping mouth
Torn by the hungry blade that trues the twisting grain
I wonder did he ever strive as I do now, with words and rhyme uncouth
To write in memorandum to a Trying Plane.