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