FINDERS OF FRIENDS

DEDICATION OF TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE

2011-05-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

SPRING speaks again, and all our woods are stirred,
And all our wastes aflower around,
That twice have heard keen April’s clarion sound
Since here we first together saw and heard
Spring’s light reverberate and reiterate word
Shine forth and speak in season. Life stands crowned
Here with the best one thing it ever found,
As of my soul’s best birthdays dawns the third.

There is a friend that as the wise man saith
Cleaves closer than a brother: nor to me
Hath time not shown, through days like weaves at strife
This truth more sure than all things else but death,
This pearl most perfect found in all the sea
This washes toward your feet these waifs of life.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

SOCIETY IN SOLITUDE

2011-05-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

From “Retirement”

I PRAISE the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd,−−
How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

William Cowper.

WE LOVE BUT FEW

2011-05-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

OH yes, we mean all kind words that we say
To old friends and to new;
Yet doth this truth grow clearer day by day:
We love but few.

We love! we love! What easy words to say,
And sweet to hear,
When sunrise splendor brightens all the way,
And, far and near,

Are breath of flowers and caroling of birds,
And bells that chime;
Our hearts are light: we do not weigh our words
At morning time!

But when the matin music all is hushed,
And life’s great load
Doth weigh us down, and thick with dust
Doth grow the road,

Then do we say less often that we love.
The words have grown!
With pleading eyes we look to Christ above,

Their lives are bound to ours by mighty bands
No moral strait,
Nor Death himself, with his prevailing hands,
Can separate.

The world is wide, and many friends are dear,
And friendships true;
Yet do these words read plainer, year by year:
We love but few.

The Humbler Poets.

EARLY FRIENDSHIP

2010-03-16T18:12:00.001-07:00

THE half-seen memories of childish days,
When pains and pleasures lightly came and went;
The sympathies of boyhood rashly spent
In fearful wanderings trough forbidden ways;
The vague, but manly wish to tread the maze
Of life to noble ends,-whereon intent,
Asking to know for what man here is sent,
The bravest heart must often pause, and gaze;
The firm resolve to seek the chosen end
Of manhood’s judgement, cautious and mature,-
With strength no selfish purpose can secure:
My happy lot is this, that all attend
That friendship which first came, and which shall last endure.

Aubrey Thomas de Vere.

THE EVENING WALK

2010-03-16T18:10:00.001-07:00

AT evening too, how pleasing was your walk,
Endeared by Friendship’s unrestrained talk,
When to the upland heights we bent our way,
To view the last beam of departing day;
How calm was all around! No playful breeze
Sighed’ mid the wavy foliage of the trees,
But all was still, save when, with drowsy song,
The gray-fly wound his sullen horn along;
And save when heard in soft, yet merry glee,
The distant church-bells’ mellow harmony;
The silver mirror of the lucid brook,
That ’mid the tufted broom its still course took;
The rugged arch, that clasped its silent tides,
With moss and rank weeds hanging down its sides:
The craggy rock, that jutted on the sight;
The shrieking bat, that took its heavy flight;
All, all was pregnant with divine delight.
We loved to watch the swallow swimming high,
In the bright azure of the vaulted sky;
Or gaze upon the clouds, whose colored pride
Was scattered thinly o’er the welkin wide,
And tinged with such variety of shade,
To the charmed soul sublimest thoughts conveyed.
In these what forms romantic did we trace,
While fancy led us o’er the realms of space!
Now we espied the thunderer in his car,
Leading the embattled seraphim to war,
Then stately towers descried, sublimely high,
In Gothic grandeur frowning on the sky —
Or saw, wide stretching o’er the azure height,
A ridge of glaciers in mural white,
Hugely terrific.— But those times are o’er,
And the fond scene can charm mine eyes no more;
For thou art gone, and I am left below,
Alone to struggle through this world of woe.

Henry Kirke White.

GLIMPSES OF THE PAST

2010-03-16T18:07:00.000-07:00

THERE is such power even in smallest things
To bring the dear past back; a flower’s tint,
A snatch of some old song, the fleeting glint
Of sunbeams on the wave— each vivid brings

The lost days up, as from the idle strings
Of wind-harp sad a breeze evokes the hint
Of antique tunes. A glove which keeps imprint
Of a loved hand the heart with torture wrings

By memory of a clasp meant more than speech;
A face seen in the crowd with curve of cheek
Or sweep of eyelash our woe’s core can reach.

How strong is love to yearn, and yet how weak
To strive with fate: the lesson al things teach,
As of the past in myriad ways they speak.

Arlo Bates

THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE

2010-03-16T18:04:00.000-07:00

O MEMORIES of green and pleasant places,
Where happy birds their wood-notes twittered low!
O love that lit the dear familiar faces
We buried long ago!

From barren heights their sweetness we remember,
And backward gaze with wistful, yearning eyes,
As hearts regret, mid snow-drifts of December,
The summer’s sunny skies.

Glad hours that seemed their rainbow tints to borrow
From some illumined page of fairy lore;
Bright days that never lacked a bright to-morrow,
Days that return no more.

Fair gardens, with their many-blossomed alleys,
And red, ripe roses breathing out perfume;
Deep violet nooks in green, sequestered valleys
Empurpled o’er with bloom.

Sunset that lighted up the brown-leaved beeches,
Turning their dusky glooms to glittering gold;
Moonlight that on the river’s fern-fringed beaches
Streamed white-rayed, silvery cold.

O’er moorlands bleak we wander weary-hearted,
Through many a tangled, wild, and thorny maze,
Remembering as in dreams the days departed,
The bygone, happy days.

The Humbler Poets.

A HEALTH

2010-03-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

I FILL this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;

To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’T is less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music’s own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows,
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,—
The idol of past years!

Of her bright face one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain;
But memory, such as mine of her,
So very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh
Will not be life’s but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon.
Her health! And would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.

Edward Coate Pinkney.

SONG

2010-03-16T17:59:00.001-07:00

THO’ lost to sight, to mem’ry dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope to meet again.

Oh, fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wand’ring down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild flowers.

Yes, life then seem’d one pure delight,
Tho’ now each spot looks drear;
Yet, tho’ thy smile be lost to sight,
To mem’ry thou art dear.

Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.

I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly lov’d,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro’ the fields we rov’d.

Yes, life then seem’d one pure delight,
Tho’ now each spot looks drear;
Yet, tho’ thy smile be lost to sight,
To mem’ry thou art dear.

George Linley.

TWENTY YEARS AGO

2010-03-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

I'VE wandered to the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree,
Upon the schoolhouse playground, that sheltered you and me;
But none were left to greet me, Tom; and few were left to know,
Who played with us upon the green some twenty years ago.

The grass is just as green, Tom; barefooted boys at play
Were sporting, just as we did then, with spirits just as gay.
But the “master” sleeps upon the hill, which, coated o’er with snow,
Afforded us a sliding-place some twenty tears ago.

The old schoolhouse is altered now; the benches are replaced
By new ones, very like the same our penknives once defaced;
But the same old bricks are in the wall, the bell swings to and fro;
Its music’s just the same, dear Tom, ’t was twenty years ago.

The boys were playing some old game, beneath that same old tree;
I have forgot the name just now-you’ve played the same with me
On that same spot; ’t was played with knives, by throwing so and so;
The loser had a task to do- there, twenty years ago.

The river’s running just as still; the willows on its side
Are larger than they were, Tom; the stream appears less wide;
But the grapevine swing is ruined now, where once we played the beau,
And swung our sweethearts-pretty girls- just twenty years ago.

The spring that bubbled ’neath the hill, close by the spreading beech,
Is very slow –’t was then so high that we could scarcely reach;
And kneeling down to get a drink, dear Tom, I started so,
To see how sadly I am changed since twenty years ago.

Near by the spring, upon an elm, you know I cut your name,
Your sweetheart’s just beneath it, Tom, and you did mine the same;
Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark, ’t was dying sure but slow,
just as she died, whose name you cut, some twenty years ago.

My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came to my eyes;
I thought of her I loved so well; those early broken ties;
I visited the old churchyard, and took some flowers to strew
Upon the graves of those we loved some twenty years ago.

Some are in the churchyard laid, some sleep beneath the sea;
But few are left of our old class, excepting you and me;
And when our time shall come, Tom, and we were called to go,
I hope they’ll lay us where we played just twenty years ago,

Francis Hueston.

LIKE TO A COIN

2010-03-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

LIKE to a coin, passing from hand to hand,
Are common memories, and day by day
the sharpness of their impress wears away.
But love’s remembrances unspoiled withstand
The touch of time, as in an antique land
Where some proud town old centuries did slay,
Intaglios buried lie, still in decay
Perfect and precious spite of grinding sand.
What fame or joy or sorrow has been ours,
What we have hoped or feared, we may forget.
The clearness of all memory time deflours,
Save that of love alone, persistent yet
Though sure oblivious all things else devours,
Its tracing firm as when they first were set.

Arlo Bates

AND DOTH NOT A MEETING LIKE THIS MAKE AMENDS?

2010-03-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

AND doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I’ve been wandr’ing away-
To see thus around me my youth’s early friends
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?

Though haply o’er some of your bows, as o’er mine,
the snow-fall of Time may be stealing-what then?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,
We’ll wear the gay tinge of Youth’s roses again.

What softened remembrances come o’er the heart,
In gazing on those we’ ve been lost to so long!
The sorrows, the joys, of which once they were part,
Still round them, like visions of yesterday, throng;

As letters some hand hath invisibly traced,
When held to the flame will steal out on the sight,
So many a feeling, that long seemed effaced,
The warmth of a moment like this brings to light.

And thus, as in memory’s bark we shall glide,
To visit the scenes of our boyhood anew,
Though oft we may see, looking down on the tide,
The wreck of full many a hope shining through;
Yet still, as in fancy we point to the flowers
That once made a garden of all the gay shore,
Deceived for a moment, we’ll think them still ours,
And breathe the fresh air of life’s morning once more.

So brief our existence, a glimpse, at the most,
Is all we can have of the few we hold dear;
And oft even joy is unheeded and lost
For want of some heart that could echo it, near.
Ah, well may we hope, when this short life is gone,
To meet in some world of more permanent bliss;
For a smile, or a grasp of the hand, hast’ning on,
Is all we enjoy of each other in this.

But, come, the more rare such delights to the heart,
The more we should welcome, and bless them the more;
They’re ours when we meet-they are lost when we part-
They’re ours, when we meet- they are lost when ’t is o’er.
Thus circling the cup, hand in hand, ere we drink,
Let Sympathy pledge us, through pleasure, through pain,
That, fast as a feeling but touches one link,
Her magic shall send it direct through the chain.

Thomas Moore.

BILL AND JOE

2010-03-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,-
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright as morning dew,-
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.

Your name may flaunt a titled trail,
Proud as a cockerel’s rainbow tail;
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O’Shanter’s luckless mare;
To-day, old friend, remember still
That I am Joe and you are Bill.

You’ve won the great world’s envied prize,
And grand you look in people’s eyes,
With H.O.N. an L.L.D.
In big brave letters, fair to see,-
Your firs, old fellow! off they go!
How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe?

You’ve worn the judge’s ermined robe
You’ve taught your name to half the globe;
You’ve sung mankind a deathless strain;
You’ve made the dead past live again:
The world may call you what it will,
But you and I are Joe and Bill.

The chaffing young folks stare and say,
“See those old buffers, bent and gray;
They talk like fellows in their teens!
Mad, poor old boys! That’s what it means,”-
And shake their heads; they little know
The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe!

How Bill forgets his hour of pride,
While Joe sits smiling at his side;
How Joe, in spite of time’s disguise,
Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,-
Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill
As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame;
A giddy whirlwind’s fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust:
a few swift years, and who can show
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe!

The weary idol takes his stand,
Holds out his bruised and aching hand,
While gaping thousands come and go,-
How vain it seems, this empty show!
Till all at once his pulses thrill,
’T is poor old Joe’s “God bless you, Bill!”

And shall we breathe in happier spheres
the names that pleased our mortal ears,
In some sweet lull of harp and song,
For earth-born spirits none too long,-
Just whispering of the world below,
Where this was Bill, and that was Joe?

No matter; while our home is here
No sounding name is half so dear;
When fades at length our lingering day,
Who cares what pompous tombstones say?
Read on the hearts that love us still,
Hic jacet Joe. Hic jacet Bill.

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

THE DEAREST ARE THE AULDEST

2010-03-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

IT'S an owercome sooth for age and youth
And it brooks wi' nae denial,
That the dearest friends are the auldest friends
And the young are just on trial.

There's a rival bauld wi' young an' auld
And it's him that hath bereft me;
For the surest friends are the auldest friends,
And the maist o' mine hae left me.

There are kind hearts still, for friends to fill
And fools to take and break them;
But the nearest friends are the auldest friends
And the grave's the place to seek them.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

WIFE, CHILDREN AND FRIENDS

2010-03-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

WHEN the black-lettered list to the gods was presented
(The list of what Fate for each mortal intends),
At the long string of ills a kind goddess relented,
And slipped in three blessings,-wife, children and friends.

In vain surly Pluto maintained he was cheated,
For justice divine could not compass its ends;
The scheme of man's penance he swore was defeated,
For earth becomes heaven with-wife, children and friends.

If the stock of our bliss is in stranger hands vested,
The fund, ill secured, oft in banckruptcy ends;
But the heart issues bills which are never protested,
When drawn on the firm of-wife, children, and friends.

Though valor still glows in his life's dying embers,
The death-wounded tar, who his colors defends,
Drops a tear of regret as he dying remembers
How blessed was his home with-wife, children and friends.

The soldier, whose deeds live immortal in story,
Whom duty to far distant latitudes sends,
With transport would barter whole ages of glory
For one happy day with-wife, children and friends.

Though spice-breathing gales on his caravan hover,
Though for him all Arabia's fragrance ascends,
The merchant still thinks of the woodbines that cover
The bower where he sat with -wife, children and friends.

The dayspring of youth, still unclouded by sorrow,
Alone on itself for enjoyment depends;
But dear is the twilight of age, if it borrow
No warmth from the smile of- wife, children, and friends.

Let the breath of renown ever freshmen and nourish
The laurel which o'er the dead favorite bends;
O'er me wave the willow, and long may it flourish,
Bedewed with the tears of-wife, children, and friends.

Let us drink, for my song, growing graver and graver,
To subjects too solemn insensibly tends;
Let us drink, pledge me high, love and virtue shall flavor
The glass which I fill to-wife, children and friends.

William Robert Spencer.

THE GRACIOUS PAST

2010-03-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

IN June 't is good to lie beneath a tree
While the blithe season comforts every sense,
Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart,
Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares,
Fragrant asilent as that rosy snow
Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up
And tenderly lines some last-year robin's nest.
There muse I of old time, old hopes, old friends,-
Old friends! The writing of those words has borne
My fancy backward to the gracious past,
The generous past, when all was possible,
For all was untried; the years between
Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none
Wiser than this, -to spend in all things else,
But of old friends to be most miserly.
Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring,
As to an oak, and precious more and more,
Without deservingness or help of ours,
They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each year,
Their unbought rings of shelter or of shade.
Sacred to me the lichens on the bark,
Which Nature's milliners would scrape away;
Most dear and sacred every withered limb!
'T is good to set them early, for our faith
Pines as we age, and, after wrinkles come,
Few plant, but water dead ones with vain tears.

James Rusell Lowell

OLD FRIENDS

2010-03-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

WE just shake hands at meeting,
With many that come nigh,
We nod the head in greeting
To many that go by.
But we welcome through the gateway
Our few old friends and true;
The hearts leap up and straightway
There's open house for you,
Old friends,
Wide-open house for you.

The surface will be sparkling,
Let but a sunbeam shine,
But in the deep lies darkling
The true life of the wine.
The forth is for the many,
The wine is for the few;
Unseen, untouched of any,
We keep the best for you,
Old friends,
The very best for you.

"The many" cannot know us ,
The only pace the strand
Where at our wors we show us,
The waters thick with sand;
But out beyond the leaping
Dim surge "'t is clear and blue,"
And there, old friends, we're keeping
A waiting calm for you,
Old friends,
A sacred calm for you

The Humbler Poets.

THE CANE-BOTTOM’D CHAIR

2010-03-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

IN tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,
Away from the world an its toils and its cares,
I’ve a sung little kingdom up four pair of stairs.

To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure,
But the fire there is bright and the air rather pure;
And the view I behold on a sunshiny day
Is grand, through the chimney-pots over the way.

This snug little chamber is cramm’d in all nooks
With worthless old knickknacks and silly old books,
And foolish old odds and foolish old ends,
Crack’d bargains from brothers, cheap keepsakes from friends.

Old armour, prints, pictures, pipes, china (all crack’d),
Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed;
A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see;
What matter? ‘t is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

No better divan need the Sultan require,
Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire;
An ‘t is wonderful, surely, what music you get
From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.

That praying-rug came from a Turcoman’s camp;
By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp;
A Mameluke fierce yonder dagger has drawn:
’T is a murderous knife to toast muffins upon.

Long, long through the hours, and the night, and the chimes,
Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times;
As we sit in a fog mad of rich Latakie,
This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest,
There’s one that I love and I cherish the best;
For the finest of couches that’s padded with hair
I never would change thee, my cane-bottom’d chair.

’T is a bandy-legg’d, high-shoulder’d, worm-eaten seat,
With a cracking old back, and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there,
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottom’d chair.

If chairs have but feeling, in holding such charms,
A thrill must have pass’d through your wither’d old arms!
I look’d, and I long’d , and I wish’d in despair;
I wish’d myself turn’d to a cane-bottom’d chair.

If chairs have but feeling, in holding such charms,
A thrill must have pass’d through you wither’d old arms!
I look’d, and I long’d, and I wish’d in despair;
I wish’d myself turn’d to a cane bottom’d chair.

It was but a moment she sat in this place,
She’d a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her face!
A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair,
And she sat there, and bloom’d in my cane-bottom’d chair.

And so I have valued my chair ever since,
Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince;
Saint Fanny, my patroness, sweet I declare,
The queen of my heart and my cane-bottom’d chair.

When the candles burn low, and the company’s gone,
In silence of night as I sit here alone-
I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair-
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottom’d chair.

She comes from the past, and revisits my room;
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom;
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair,
And yonder she sits in my cane-bottom’d chair.

William Makepeace Thackeray.

THE HEART’S SUMMER

2010-03-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

THE cold blast at the casement beats;
The window-panes are white;
The snow whirls through the empty streets;
It’s a dreary night!

Sit down, old friend, the wine-cups wait;
Fill to o’erflowing, fill!
Through winter howleth at the gate,
In our hearts ‘’t is summer still!

For we full many summer joys
And greenwood sports have shared,
When free and ever-roving boys,
The rocks, the streams, we dared;
And, as I looked upon thy face,
Back, back o’er the years of ill,
My heart flies to that happy place,
Where it is summer still.

Yes, though like sere leaves on the ground,
Our early hopes are strown,
And cherished flowers lie dead around,
And singing birds are flown,
The verdure is not faded quite,
Not mute all tones that thrill;
And seeing, hearing thee to-night,
In my heart ’t is summer still.

Fill up! The olden times come back
With light and life once more;
We scan the Future’s sunny track
From Youth’s enchanted shore;

The lost return: through fields of bloom
We wander at our will;
Gone is the winter’s angry gloom,-
In our heart ’t is summer still.

Epes Sargent

THE OTHER WORLD

2009-11-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

IT lies around us like a cloud.―
A world we do not see;
Yet the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.

Its gentle breezes fan our cheek;
Amid our worldly cares
Its gentle voices whisper love,
And mingle with our prayers.

Sweet hearts around us throb and beat,
Sweet helping hands are stirred,
And palpitates the veil between
With breathings almost heard.

The silence, —awful, sweet, and calm,
They have no power to break;
For mortal words are not for them
To utter or partake.

So thin, so soft, so sweetly glide,
So near to press they seem,—
They seem to lull us to our rest,
And melt into our dream.

And in the hush of rest they bring,
’T is easy now to see
How lovely and how sweet a pass
The hour of death may be.

To close the eye, and close the ear,
Wrapped in a trance of bliss,
And gently dream in loving arms,
To swoon to that, — from this.

Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep,
Scarce asking where we are,
to feel all evil sink away,
All sorrow and all care.

Sweet souls around us! watch us still,
Press nearer to our side,
Into our thoughts, into our prayers,
With gentle helpings glide.

Let death between us be as naught,
A dried and vanished stream;
Your joy be the reality,
Our suffering life, the dream.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

THE DEAD FRIEND

2009-11-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

NOT to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Descend to contemplate
The form that once was dear!
The spirit is not there
Which kindled that dead eye,
Which throbbed in that cold heart,
Which in that motionless hand
Hath met thy friendly grasp.
The spirit is not there!

It is but lifeless, perishable flesh
That moulders in the grave,
Earth, air, and water’s ministering particles
Now to the elements
Resolved, their uses done.
Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Follow thy friend beloved,
The spirit is not there!

Often together have we talked of death:
How sweet it were to see
All doubtful things made clear;
How sweet it were, with powers
Such as the Cherubim,
To view the depth of Heaven!
O Edmundf! thou hast first
Begun the travel of Eternity!
I look upon the stars,
And think that thou art there,
Unfettered as the thought that follows thee.

And we have often said how sweet it were
With unseen ministry of angel power
To watch the friends we lov’d.
Edmund, we did not err!
Sure I have felt thy presence! Thou hast given
A birth to holy thought,
Hast kept me from the world unstained and pure.
Edmund, we did not err!
Our best affections here,
They are not like the toys of infancy;
The soul outgrows them not;
We do not cast them off;
Oh, if it could be so,
It were indeed a dreadful thing to die!

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Follow thy friend beloved!
But in the lonely hour,
But in the evening walk,
Think that he companies thy solitude;
Think that he holds with thee
Mysterious intercourse:
And though remembrance wake a tear,
There will be joy in grief.

Robert Southey.

FROM THE STILL SPHERE

2009-11-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

FROM the still sphere where dwells my highest hope,
Stand off, I pray you, nor disturb in the air!
Lest while you boast it living, it should die,
And I lose all, whose all is centered there.

Bring me no arguments, no reasoned proof;
How it their weakness cloud that sacred trust?
Leave it to God alone to mark its growth
And keep it deathless― till I turn to dust.

Nor is this all,—though more I dare not say,—
Words would but marshal thoughts to endless strife;
Enough, if, cherished in my being’s core,
The silent hope may mould the lowly life.

Lucy Smith.

THEY ARE ALL GONE

2009-11-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

THEY are all gone into the world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here!
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my said thoughts doth clear;

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove, —
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun’s remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days, —
My days which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmering and decays.

O holy hope! and high humility,—
High as the heavens above!
these are your walks, and you have showed them me
To kindle my cold love.

Dear, beauteous death,— the jewel of the just,—
Shining nowhere but in the dark!
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledged bird’s nest may know,
At first sight, if the bird be flown;
But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

If a star were confined into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there,
But when the hand that locked her up gives room,
She’ll shine through all the sphere.

O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under thee!
Resume thy spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.

Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill
My perspective still ass they pass;
Or else remove me hence unto that hill
Where I shall need no glass.

Henry Vaughan.

IF THOU GOEST FIRST

2009-11-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

MY friend, adown Life’s valley, hand in hand,
With grateful change of grave and merry speech
Or song, our hearts unlocking each to each,
We’ll journey onward to the silent land;
And when stern Death shall loose that loving band,
Taking in his cold hand a hand of ours,
The one shall strew the other’s grave with flowers,
Nor shall his heart a moment be unmanned.
My friend and brother! if thou goest frist,
Wilt thou no more re-visit me below?
Yea, when my heart seems happy, causelessly,
And swells, not dreaming why, as it would burs
With joy unspeakable— my soul shall know
That thou, unseen, art bending over me.

James Rusell Lowell

FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS

2009-11-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

WHEN the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;

Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful fire-light
Dance upon the parlor wall,

Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;

He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!

They, the holy ones and weaky,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!

And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.

With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.

And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.

Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit’s voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.

O, through oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

NOT LOST BUT GONE BEFORE

2009-11-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

HOW mournful seems, in broken dreams,
The Memory of the day,
When icy Death hath sealed the breath
Of some dear form of clay.

When pale, unmoved, the face we loved,
The face we thought so fair,
And the hand lies cold, whose fervent hold
Once charmed away despair

Oh what could heal the grief we feel
For hopes that come no more,
Had we ne’er heard the Scripture word,
“Not lost, but gone before.”

Oh sadly yet with vain regret
The widowed heart must yearn;
And mothers weep their babes asleep
In the sunlight’s vain return.

The brother’s heart shall rue to part
From the one through childhood known;
And the orphan’s tears lament for years
A friend and father gone.

For death and life, with ceaseless strife,
Beat wild on this world’s shore,
And all our calm is in that balm,
“Not lost, but gone before.”

Oh! world wherein nor death, nor sin,
Nor weary warfare dwells;
Their blessed home we parted form
With sobs and sad waterfalls.

Where eyes awake, for whose dear sake
Our own with tears grow dim,
And faint accords of dying words
Are changed for heaven’s sweet hymn;
Oh! there at last, life’s trials past,
We’ll meet our loved once more,
Whose feet have trod the path to God―
“Not lost but gone before.”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton.

SOME TIME AT EVE

2009-11-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

SOME time ate eve when the tide is low
I shall slip my mooring and sail away,
With no response to the friendly hail
Of kindred craft in the busy bay.
In the silent hush of the twilight pale,
When the night stoops down to embrace the day,
And the voices call in the waters flow,―
Some time at eve when the tide is low,
I shall slip my mooring and sail away.

Through the purpling shadows that darkly trail
O’er the ebbing tide of the Unknown Sea,
I shall fare me away, with a dip of sail
And a ripple of waters to tell the tale
Of a lonely voyager, sailing away
To the Mystic Isles where at anchor lay
The crafts of those who have sailed before
O’er the Unknown Sea to the Unseen Shore.

A few who have watched me sail away
Will miss my craft from the busy bay;
Some friendly barks that were anchored near,
Some loving souls that my heart held dear,
In silent sorrow will drop a tear, ―
But I shall have peacefully furled my sail
In moorings sheltered from storm or gale,
And greeted the friends who have sailed before
O’er the Unknown sea to the Unseen Shore.

Elizabeth Clark Hardy.

THE FLOWER OF THEIR SOULS

2009-11-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

TIME takes them home that we loved,
fair names and famous,
To the soft long sleep,
to the broad sweet bosom of death;
But the flower of their souls,
he shall take not away to shame us,
Nor the lips lack song forever that now lack breath.
For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell,
Thoguh the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

THE DEAD POET-FRIEND

2009-11-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

THEY told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of gray ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales,
awake,
For Death he taketh all away, but these cannot take.

From the Greek of Callimachus.
Translation of W. Cory.

STILL TENANTED

2009-11-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

OLD house, how desolate thy life!
Nay, life and death alike have fled;
Nor thrift, nor any song within,
Nor daily thought for daily bread.

The dew is nightly on thy hearth,
Yet something sweeter to thee clings,
And some who enter think they hear
The murmur of departing wings.

No doubt within the chambers there,
Not by the wall nor through the gate,
Uncounted tenants come, to whom
The house is not so desolate.

To them the walls are white and warm,
The chimneys lure the laughing flame,
The bride and groom take happy hands,
The new-born babe awaits a name.

Who knows what far-off journeyers
At night return with winged feet,
to cool their fever in brook,
Or haunt the meadow, clover sweet?

And yet the morning mowers find
No footprint in the grass they mow,
The water’s clear unwritten song
Is not of things that come or go.

’T is not forsaken rooms alone
That unseen people love to tread,
Nor in the moments only when
The day’s eluded cares are dead.

To every home, or high or low,
Some unimagined guests repair,
Who come unseen to break and bless
The bread and oil they never share.

Hiam Rick

“GOOD-BYE”

2009-10-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

WE say it for an hour or for years;
We say it smiling, say it choked with tears;
We say it coldly, say it with a kiss;
And yet we have no other word than this, —
“Good-bye.”

We have no dearer word for our heart’s friend,
For him who journeys to the world’s far end,
And scars our soul with going; thus we say,
As unto him who steps but o’er the way,—
“Good-bye.”

Alike to those we love and those we hate,
We say no more in parting. At life’s gate,
To him who passes out beyond earth’s sight,
We cry, as to the wanderer for a night,—
“Good-bye.”

Grace Denio Litchfield

ON PARTING WITH HIS BOOKS

2009-10-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

AS one, who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, but hopes again, ere while,
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers, as he may, affliction’s dart;
Thus, lov’d associates! chiefs of elder art!
Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you — nor with fainting heart.
For, pass a few short years, or days or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore;
When freed from earth, unlimited its powers.
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more.

William Roscoe.

ALL TOGETHER

2009-10-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

OLD friends and dear! it were ungentle rhyme,
If I should question of your true hearts whether
Ye have forgotten that far, pleasant time,
The good old time when we were all together.

Our limbs were lusty and our souls sublime,
We never heeded cold and winter weather,
Nor sun nor travel, in that cheery time,
The brave old time when we were all together.

Pleasant it was to tread the mountain thyme,
Sweet was the pure and piny mountain ether,
And pleasant all; but this was in the time,
The good old time when we were all together.

Since then I’ve strayed through many a fitful clime,
(Tossed on the wind of fortune like a feather,)
And chanced with rare good fellows in my time —
But ne’er the time that we have known together.

But none like those brave hearts (for now I climb
Gray hills alone, or thread the lonely heather,)
That walked beside me in the ancient time,
The good old time when we were all together.

Long since, we parted in our careless prime,
Like summer birds no June shall hasten hither;
No more to meet as in that merry time,
The sweet spring-time that shone on all together.

Some, to the fevered city’s toil and grime,
And some o’er distant seas, and some —ah! whither?
Nay, we shall never meet as in the time,
The dear old time when we were all together.

And some —above their heads, in wind and rime,
Year after year, the grasses wave and wither;
Aye, we shall meet! —’t is but a little time,
And all shall lie with folded hands together.

And if, beyond the sphere of doubt and crime,
Lie purer lands —ah! let our steps be thither;
That, done with earthly change and earthly time,
In God’s good time we may be all together.

Henry Howard Brownell.

THE GREENWOOD

2009-10-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

OH! when ’t is summer weather,
And the yellow bee, with fairy sound,
The waters clear is humming round,
And the cuckoo sings unseen,
And the leaves are waving green, —
Oh then ’t is sweet,
In some retreat,
To hear the murmuring dove,
With those whom on earth alone we love,
And to wind through the greenwood together.

But when ’t is winter weather,
And crosses grieve,
And friends deceive,
And rain and sleet
The lattice beat,—
Oh! then ’t is sweet,
To sit and sing
Of the friends with whom, in the days of Spring,
We roamed through the greenwood together.

William Lisle Bowles

PARTED FRIENDS

2009-10-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

My bosom friend, ’t is long since we have looked
Upon each other’s face; and God may will
It shall be longer, ere we meet again.
Awhile it seemed most strange unto my heart
That I should mourn, and thou not nigh to cheer;
That I should shrink ’mid perils, and thy spirit
Far away, far, powerless to brave them with me.
Now I am used to wear a lonesome heart
About me; now the agencies of ill
Have so oppressed my inward, absolute self,
That feelings shared and fully answered, scarce
Would seem my own. Like a bright singular dream
Is parted from me that strong sense of love,
Which, as one indivisible glory, lay
On both our souls, and dwelt in us, so far
As we did dwell in it. A mighty presence!

There is another world: and some have deemed
It is a world of music, and of light,
And human voices, and delightful forms,
Where the material shall no more be cursed
By dominance of evil, but become
A beauteous evolution of pure spirit,

Opposite, but not warring, rather yielding
New grace, and evidence of liberty.
Oh, may we recognize each other there,
My bosom friend! May we cleave to each other
And love once more together! Pray for me,
That such may be the glory of our end.

Arthur Henry Hallam.

THE VANISHED PAST

2009-10-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

From “The Golden Legend”

PRINCE HENRY

I CANNOT sleep! my fevered brain
Calls up the vanished Past again,
And throws its misty splendors deep
Into the pallid realms of sleep!
A breath from that far-distant shore
Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o’er intervening seas
Sweet odors from the Hesperides!
A wind, that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And, touching the æolian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings!
Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o’erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled, one by one,
To stony channels in the sun!
Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended!
Come back, with all that light attended,
Which seemed to darken and decay
When ye arose and went away!
They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long-ago,
The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;
They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!
I would not sleep! I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away!
Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place,
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

ONLY A YEAR

2009-10-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

ONE year ago, —a ringing voice,
A clear blue eye,
And clustering curls of sunny hair,
Too fair to die.

Only a year, — no voice, no smile,
No glance of eye,
No clustering curls of golden hair,
Fair but to die!

One year ago, —what loves, what schemes
Far into life!
What joyous hopes, what high resolves,
What generous strife!

The silent picture on the wall,
The burial-stone
Of all that beauty, life and joy,
Remain alone!

One year, —one year, — one little year,
And so much gone!
And yet the even flow of life
Moves calmly on.

The grave grows green, the flowers bloom fair,
Above that head;
No sorrowing tint of leaf or spray
Says he is dead.

No pause or hush of merry birds
That sing above
Tells us how coldly sleeps below
The form we love.

Where hast thou been this year, beloved?
What hast thou seen, —
What visions fair, what glorious life,
Where thou hast been?

The veil! the veil! so thin, so strong!
’Twixt us and thee;
The mystic veil! when shall it fall,
That we may see?

Not dead, not sleeping, not even gone,
But present still,
And waiting for the coming hour
Of God’s sweet will.

Lord of the living and the dead,
Our Saviour dear!
We lay in silence at thy feet
This sad, sad year.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

THE LAVENDER

2009-10-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

HOW prone we are to hide and hoard
Each little treasure time has stored,
To tell of happy hour!
We lay aside with tender care
A tattered book, a lock of hair,
A bunch of faded flowers.

When death has led with silent hand
Our darlings to the “Silent Land,”
Awhile we sit bereft;
But time goes on; anon we rise,
Our dead and buried from our eyes,
We gather what is left.

The books they loved, the songs they sang,
The little flute whose music rang
So cheerily of old;
The pictures we had watched them paint,
The last plucked flower, with odor faint,
That tell from fingers cold.

We smooth and fold with reverent care
The robes they living used to wear;
And painful pulses stir
As o’er the relics of our dead,
With bitter rain of tears, we spread
Pale purple lavender.

And when we come in after years,
With only tender April tears
On cheeks once white with care,
To look on treasures put away
Despairing on that far-off day,
A subtle scent is there.

Dew-wet and fresh we gathered them,
These fragrant flowers; now every stem
Is bare of all its bloom:
Tear-wet and sweet we strewed them here
To lend our relics, sacred, dear,
Their beautiful perfume.

The scent abides on book and lute,
On curl and flower, and with its minute
But eloquent appeal
It wins from us a deeper sob
For our lost dead, a sharper throb
Than we are wont to feel.

It whispers of the “long ago”;
Its love, its loss, its aching woe,
And buried sorrows stir;
And tears like those we shed of old
Roll down our cheeks as we behold
Our faded lavender.

The Humbler Poets

THE MEETING

2009-10-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

AFTER so long an absence
At last we meet again;
Does the meeting give us pleasure
Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,
And but few of us linger now,
Like the prophet’s two or three berries
In the top of the uppermost bough.

We cordially greet each other
In the old familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
How old and gray he is grown!

We speak of a Merry Christmas,
And many a happy New Year;
But each in his heart is thinking
Of those that are not here,

We speak of friends and their fortunes,

And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
And the living alone seem dead.

And at last we hardly distinguish
Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
Steals over our merriest jests.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

2009-10-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

BREAK, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me

Oh, well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
Oh well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

An the stately ships go on
To their heaven under the hill:
But oh: for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

FRIENDSHIP

2009-09-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

FRIENDSHIP needs no studied phrases,
Polished face, or winning wiles;
Friendship deals no lavish praises,
Friendship dons no surface smiles.

Friendship follows Nature’s diction,
Shuns the blandishments of Art,
Boldly serves truth from fiction,
Speaks the language of the heart.

Friendship favors no condition,
Scorns a narrow-minded creed,
Lovingly fulfils its mission,
Be it word or be it deed.

Friendship cheers the faint and weary,
Makes the timid spirit brave,
Warns the erring, lights the dreary,
Smooths the passage to the grave.

Friendship −−pure, unselfish friendship,
All through life’s allotted span,
Nurtures, strengthens, widens, lengthens
Man’s affinity with man.

The Humbler Poets.

THE POET’S GUIDE

2009-09-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

[Lord Bolingbroke]

COME then, my firend! my genius! come along;
O master of the poet and the song!
And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,
To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason, or polite to please.
O, while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame;
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
When statesmen, heroes, kings in dust repose,
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,
Shall then this verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend!
That, urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart:
From wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light;
Showed erring pride, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT

Alexander Pope.

FELLOWSHIP OF SOULS

2009-09-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

Fragment

I AM as a spirit who has dwelt
Within his heart of hearts,, and I have felt
His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known
The inmost converse of his soul, the tone
Unheard but in the silence of his blood,
When all the pulses in their multitude
Image the trembling calm of summer seas,
I have unlockt the golden melodies
Of his deep soul, as with a master key,
And loosened them and bathed myself therein
Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist
Clothing his wings with lightning.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

TO HENRY WADSORTH LONGFELLOW

2009-09-28T16:31:00.001-07:00

On his birthday, 27th February, 1867

I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song,
Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong
The new moon’s mirrored skiff, he slides along,
Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name
Is blown about the world, but to his friends
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim
To murmur a God bless you! and there ends.

As I muse backward up the checkered years,
Wherein so much was given, so much was lost,
Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears
But hush! this is not for profaner ears;
Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost.

Some suck up poison from a sorrow’s core,
As naught but nightshade grew upon earth’s ground;
Love turned all his to heart’s-ease, and the more
Faith tried his bastions, she but forced a door,
Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound.

Even as a wind-waved fountain’s swaying shade
Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun,
So through his trial faith translucent rayed,
Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed
A heart of sunshine that would fain o’errun.

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay,
And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss,
If our poor life be lengthened by a lay,
He shall not go, although his presence may,
And the next age in praise shall double this.

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet
As gracious natures find his song to be;
May Age steal on with softly cadenced feet
Falling in music, as for him were meet
Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!

James Russell Lowell

EMERSON

2009-09-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

MISFORTUNE to have lived not knowing thee!
’T were not high living, nor to noblest end,
Who, dwelling near, learned not sincerity,
Rich friendship’s ornament that still doth lend
To life its consequence and propriety.

Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,

Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.
Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be
A scholar in thy university.

Amos Bronson Alcott.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG

2009-09-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

I SHOT an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth I knew not where;
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air
It fell to earth I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterwards, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroken;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

FRIENDSHIP

2009-09-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

A RUDDY drop of mainly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The lover rooted stays,
I fancied he was fled,-
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again:
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth;
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life,
Are through thy friendship fair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A FRIEND IN NEED

2009-09-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

“A FRIEND in need,” –my neighbor said to me,-
“A friend indeed, is what I fain would be:
In time of trouble when the world looks blue,
You’ll need my friendship then-and find it true!”

I thought a bit, and took him by the hand:
“Ah, no” Said I “you do not understand
The inner meaning of that simple rhyme,-
The heart has need of friendship all the time.”

Henry van Dyke

ESSENTIAL QUOTES

2009-09-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

Which are worth to know...

"The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. "

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"A friend loveth at all times, and is a brother born for adversity. "

Proverbs, XVII, 17.

"No man imparteth his joys to his friend but he joyeth the more; and no imparteth his griefs to his friend but he griveth the less. "

Francis Bacon.

"Friendship is never complete till it has been tested in the fire of sorow... Mere companionship in pleasure is not friendship."

(“Sidney Luska”) Henry Harland.

"It is wonderful to think what the presence of one human being can do for another, change everything in the world. "

George Spring Merriam.

MOHAMMED AND SEID

2009-09-26T09:40:00.000-07:00

SWEPT by the hot wind, stark, untrackable,
The stony desert stretches to the sky.
Deep-printed shadows at the tent-door lie,
And camels slumber by the burning well.
One weeps within, wrinkled and dusk of face,
White-haired and lordly, o’er the new-brought dead:

Mohammed over Seid, who loved and read
Truth in the master when a fierce disgrace
Burned in his blood and none would heed the word.
“Behold the Prophet how he mourns a slave!
So the slave’s daughter, and Mohammed heard:
“A friend has lost a friend. What Allah gave
His wisdom takes. He never yet has erred!”
Thus said, and made the slain a martial grave.

Harrison Smith Morris.

COMFORT IN CALAMITY

2009-09-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Sonnets

WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavinly from woe to woe tell o’er
The said account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, − and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare

JAFFAR

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JAFFAR, the Barmecide, the good vizier,
The poor man’s hope, the friend without a peer,
Jaffar was dead, slain by a doom unjust;
And guilty Haroun, sullen with mistrust
Of what the good, and e’en the bad, might say,
Ordained that no man living from that day
Should dare to speak his name on pain of death.

All Araby and Persia held their breath;
All but the brave Mondeer: he, proud to show
How far for love a grateful soul could go,
And facing death for very scorn and grief
(For his great heart wanted a great relief),
Stood forth in Bagdad daily, in the square
Where once had stood a happy house, and there
Harangued the tremblers at the scimitar
On all they owed to the divine Jaffar.

“Bring me this man,” the caliph cried; the man
Was brought, was gazed upon. The mutes began
To bind his arms. “Welcome, brave cords,” cried he;
“From bonds far whose Jaffar delivered me;
From wants, from shames, from loveless household fears;
Made a man’s eyes friends with delicious tears;
Restored me, loved me, put me on a par
With his great self. How can I pay Jaffar?”

Haroun, who felt that on a soul like this
The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss,
Now deigned to smile, as one great lord of fate
Might smile upon another half as great
He said, “Let worth grow frenzied if it will;
The caliph’s judgement shall be master still.
Go, and since gifts so move thee, take this gem,
The richest in the Tartar’s diadem,
And hold the giver as thou deemes fit!”
“Gifts!” cried the friend; he took, and holding it
High toward the heavens, as though to meet his star,
Exclaimed, “This, too, I owe to thee Jaffar!”

Leigh Hunt

FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND TRUTH

2009-09-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

FRIENDSHIP doth bind, with pleasant ties,
The heart of man to man, and age
But strengthens it −−it never dies
Till finished is life’s final page.

Love is the sacred link which binds
Hearts joined by friendship firmer still;
Who once has felt it, in it finds
Joys which his soul with pleasure fill.

Truth only can complete the chain,
Its links enduring strength can give;
With this unbroken ’t will remain
While e’er human soul shall live.

The Humbler Poets

ABOUT FRIENDSHIP

2009-09-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

REAL friendships have been salient facts in the life-story of every nation from remote antiquity. No race but has its famous friendships in commemoration. Yet their fame is evidence of their rarity, of their having existed between men, or women, or men and women, of exceptionally lofty and strong natures.
The friendships of ordinary quality, —begun with little consideration, from some temporary congeniality of association, lightly rooted in poor soil and soon fading, or growing in rank conditions and ere long overgrown by stronger interests. It is the great characters, the associates in stirring events and dramatic conditions, men and women who achieve—in war, literature, religion, art, statecraft, life— who stand forth historically notable illustrations of the power of friendship. As in all other possibilities of life, it is the exceptional beings who have given great renown to this kinship of the soul.
In its highest estate friendship is infrequent. Its being celebrated by writers of all nations and times shows, truly, that it is universally human, but that it has existed in splendor only between splendid natures. It may almost be reckoned among the virtues, which like gold in the rocks and soils may be found in all regions of the earth, but in widely varying conditions of purity.
One thing is certain, however: friendship is of the heart. Great intellect and forceful will power can never make or keep a friend, without great heartedness. Happily, those less gifted with capabilities for exterior accomplishing may be endowed with unselfish, faithful affection, and enjoy the delights of friendship with unspeakable comfort. Even these are not common, however. Every reasonable person sifts and selects among acquaintances to find the friend. Many may attract and be likable, yet “we love but few”.” While friendship is, then, even in imperfection, one of the most satisfactory and blessed of human relations, it becomes the more precious from its very rarity.
Friendship has been a topic for discussion by philosophers, moralists, and essayists of all ages, as a peculiarly exalted condition of life, springing as it must from unselfish devotion to the welfare of another. But, while instances of it have been the inspiration of certain great elegies by great poets, one must note that as a favorite poetic theme it bears no remotest comparison with the passion of love—whether in the graceful comedies of its beginning, the power of its full course, or the pathos, and sometimes even the tragic grief, of its close in estrangement or in death.
The prose writers find it more congenial, as a subject for analysis and discursive thought, than do the poets, for their more emotive expression.
Indeed, it is chiefly when friendship passes into the emotional phase—either of joyful
Comradeship on the one hand, or on the other of grief in alienation or bereavement— that it seems to incite the poetic fire. The realms of fellowship in thought and elevated feeling have their celebrants, but they are few and choice. Even though it must have its inception in an esthetic attraction and mutual harmony of spirit, friendship is essentially more akin to the ethical qualities than to the spontaneity of passional love, which—like the elemental presence of external nature—pervades all literature.
Moreover, the moralist may find friendship more fruitful for preaching than for practice. Cicero’s famous discourse on this theme is probably the most complete and satisfactory extant, and his relations with Atticus, the friend to whom it was addressed, were certainly high, and pure, and stable. Yet when he says, “The foundation of that steadfastness and constancy which we seek in friendship is sincerity; for nothing is steadfast which is insincere,” we must illustrate that truth by recalling the variableness and insincerity which his own ambitious egotism displayed towards others who were his friends and early helpers. The same inconsistency appears in Bacon, whose wise discriminations on friendship are admirable, yet whose ambition led him to faithless ingratitude to friends. Cicero keenly notes: “There is no greater enmity to friendship than covetousness of money, in most men, and, even in the best, an emulous desire of high offices and glory.” There he touched upon the weakness of the strong.
Prosperity and adversity are the extreme tests of friendship; and if we add rivalry in ambition or in love, and too great freedom in that little “unruly member,” the tongue, we shall come upon the most frequent causes of dissension and disruption.
All these phases—the felicitous and the unhappy—have been more or less set forth in poetic numbers. It has been the attempt in the present selection to show the nature, the value, the fellowship, the loss, the grief, the memory and the hopes of friendship, with the permanence of all genuine affection, and its satisfying extension into the Unseen. Even the reaching out toward personal affection with the ideals man has cherished of the Source of all love, and to their manifestation on earth in Jesus, “the human heart of God,” has been deemed concordant with the design of gathering these “Poems of Friendship.”
In Hugh Black’s illuminating essay on this theme, he says “The secret of friendship is just the secret of all spiritual blessing. The way to get is to give… There must be loyalty, which finds expression in service.” No deeper truth underlies any satisfactory human relation, whether it be of friendship, love, or work-a-day labor; and, while the poetic inspiration is not sermonizing but sentiment, the genuine poet leads feeling into thought and realizes to us the pregnant phrase of Keats—“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
No anthology represent a tithe of the quest after its special material, —in the present case covering both many “works” of the authors themselves and other groupings of poetical selections. Among these, the compiler would acknowledge indebtedness for suggestions to “A Symphony of the Spirit,” a choice selection by George S. Merriam, and to Slason Thompson’s interesting collection “The Humbler Poets.”

Source: Howard John R. “The Best Poems of Friendship”; New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1911. Pages 7-9.

THE FAITHFUL FRIEND

2009-09-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

From "Ecclesiasticus", VI, XXXVII

A FAITHFUL friend is a strong defense,
And he that hath found such hath found a treasure.
Change not thy friend for any good thing;
Neither a faithful brother for the gold of Ophir.
Forsake not the old friend,
For the new is not comparable to him:
For a new friend is as new wine,
But when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend;
Yea, his excellency is beyond price.

For some man is a friend of his own occasion
And will not abide in the day of trouble.
And there is a friend who, being turned to enmity and strife,
Will discover thy reproach.
Again, some friend is a companion at the table,
Yet will he not con tinue in the day of thy affliction.
In thy prosperity he will be as thyself;
But if thou be brought low, he will be against thee,
And will hide himself from thy face.
Every friend will say, I also am his friend:
But there is a friend who is a friend in name only.
Is there not a grief in it unto death,
When a companion and friend is turned ton enmity?

But a faithful friend is the medicine of life;
And they that fear the Lord shall find him.
Yea, whoso feareth the Lord shall direct his friendship aright;
For as he is, even so also shall be his friend.

Edward Young

THE FRIEND

2009-09-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men commend,
What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend?
Our health is soon decayed; goods, casual, light and vain;
Broke have we seen the force of power, and honor suffer stain.
In body's lust man doth resemble but base brute;
True virtue gets and keeps a friend, good guide of our pursuit,
Whose hearty zeal with ours accords in every case;
No term of time, no space of place, no storm can it deface.
When fickle fortune fails, this knot endureth still;
Thy kin out of their kind may swerve, when friends owe tthe good-will
What sweeter solace shall befall, than (such a) one to find
Upon whose breast thou may'st repose the secrets of thy mind?
He waileth at thy woe, his tears with thine be shed;
With thee doth he all joys enjoy, so leef a life is led.

Nicholas Grimowald

ADVICE

2009-09-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

IF ye would love and loved be,
In mind keep well these thingis three,
And sadly in thy breast imprint,-
Be secret, true and patient!

For he that patience can not leir,
He shall displeasance have perquier,
Through he had all this worldis rent:
Be secret, true and patient!

For who that secret cannot be,
Himn all good fellowship shall flee,
And credence none shall him be lent:
Be secret, true and patient!

And he that is of heart untrue
From he be ken'd farewell! adieu!
Fie on him! fie! his fame is went:
Be secret, true and patient!
Thus he that wants ane of these three
And lover glad may never be,
But aye in some thing discontent:
Be secret, true and patient!

Naught with thy tongue thyself discure
The things that thou hast of nature;
For if thou dost, thou shal repent:

Be secret, true and patient!

William Dunbar

Modernized by H.M. Fitzgibbon.

THE WINE OF LIFE

2009-09-26T07:44:00.000-07:00

From "Night Thoughts," Night II

CELESTIAL Happiness, when'er she stoops
To visit Earth, one shrine the goddess finds,
And one alone, to make her sweet amends
For absent Heaven-the bosom of a friend;
Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft,
Each other's pillow to repose divine.
Beware the counterfeit; in passion's flame
hearts melt, but melt like ice, soon harder froze.
True love strikes root in reason; passion's foe:
Virtue alone entenders us for life,-
I wrong her much-entenders us for ever:
Of Friendship's fairest fruits, the fruit most fair
Is virtue kindling at a rival fire,
And, emulously, rapid in her race.
O the soft enmity! endearing strife!
This carries friendship to her noontide point,
And gives the rivet of eternity.
From Friendship, which outlives my former themes,
Glorious survivor of old Time and Death;
From Friendship, thus that flower of heavenly seed;
The wise extract Earth's most Hyblean bliss,
Superior wisdom, crowned with smiling joy.

*************************************************************

What if (since daring on so nice a theme)
I slow thee friendship delicate as dear,
Of tender violations apt to die?
Reserve will wound it; and distrust, destroy.
Deliberate in all things with thy friend,
But since friends grow not thick on every bough,
Not every friend unrotten at the core,
First, on thy friend, deliberate with thyself,
Pause, ponder, sift; not eager in the choice,
Nor jealous of the chosen; fixing, fix;
Judge before friendship, then confide till death

************************************************************

Friendship's the wine of life, but friendship new
(Not such was his) is neither strong, nor pure.
O! for the bright complexion, cordial warmth,
And elevating spirit, of a friend,
For twenty summers ripening by my side,
All feculence of falsehood long thrown down;
All social virtues rising in his soul;
As crystal clear; and smiling as they rise!
Here nectar flows; it sparkles in our sight;
Rich to the taste, and genuine from the heart:
High-flavored bliss for gods! on Earth how rare!

Edward Young.

THE MEMORY OF THE HEART

2009-09-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

If stores of dry and learned lore we gain,
We keep them in the memory of the brain;
Names, things, and facts,
-whate’er we knowledge call,-
There is common ledger for them all;
And images on this cold surface traced
Make slight impression, and are soon effaced.
But we’ve a page, more glowing and more bright,
On which our friendship and our love to write;
That these may never from the soul depart,
We trust them to the memory of the heart.
There is no dimming, no effacement there;
Each new pulsation keeps the record clear;
Warm, golden letters all the tablet fill,
Nor lose their luster till the heart stands still.

Daniel Webster

HONEY DRIPPING FROM THE COMB

2009-09-05T16:04:00.001-07:00

How slight a thing may set one’s fancy drifting.
Upon the dead sea of the Past! –a view-
Sometimes an odor-or a rooster lifting
A far-off “Ooh! ooh-ooh!”

And suddenly we find ourselves astray
In some wood’s pasture of the Long Ago,-
Or idly dream again upon a day
Of rest we used to know.

I bit an apple but a moment since,

-A wilted apple that the worm had spurned,-
Yet hidden in the taste were happy hints
Of good old days returned.

And so my heart, like some enraptured lute,
Tinkles a tune so tender and complete,
God’s blessing must be resting on the fruit-
So bitter, yet so sweet!

James Whitcomb Riley.

BEN BOLT

2009-09-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

DON’T you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,-
Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,
Who kept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown?
In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt,
In a corner obscure and alone,
They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray,
And Alice lies under the stone.
Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt,
Which stood at the foot of the hill,
Together we’ve lain in the noonday shade,
And listened to Appleton’s mill.
The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt,
The rafters have tumbled in,
And a quiet which crawls round the walls as you gaze
Has followed the olden din.

Do you mind of the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,
At the edge of the pathless wood,
And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs,
Which nigh by the doorstep stood?
The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,
The tree you would seek for in vain;
And where once the lords of the forest waved
Are grass and the golden grain.

And don’t you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
With the master so cruel and grim,
And the shaded nook in the running brook
Where the children went to swim?
Grass grows on the master’s grave, Ben Bolt,
The spring of the brook is dry,
And of all the boys who were schoolmates then
There are only you and I.
There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt,
They have changed from the old to the new;
But I feel in the deeps of my spirit the truth,
There never was change in you.
Twelvemonths twenty have past, Ben Bolt,
Since first we were friends—yet I hail
Your presence a blessing, your friendship a truth,
Ben Bolt ot the salt-sea gale.

Thomas Dunn English.

OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT

2009-09-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

OFT in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,

Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.

Thus in the silly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all
The friends so linked together
I’ve seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.

Thus in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

Thomas Moore.

YOUNG AND OLD QUOTES OF FRIENDSHIP

2009-09-05T15:36:00.000-07:00

“The closest friendships are formed early in life, just because we are then less cautious, more open to impressions, and readier to welcome self-revelations.”
Hugh Black.

“There is no friend like the old friend who has shared our morning days. No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise: Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes.

“A friend may be often found, and lost; but an old friend can never be found, and nature has provided that he cannot be easily lost.”
Samuel Johnson.

“Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue,
All things, in short, to which belong
The charm, the grace that Time makes strong-
All these I prize, but (entre nous)
Old friends are best!
Austin Dobson.

AULD LANG SYNE

2009-09-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to min’?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’lang syne?

CHOURS

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wandered mony a weary foot
Sin’ auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’t I’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin’ auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And here’s a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie’s a hand o’ thine;
And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I’ll be mine;
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Robert Burns.

MY COMRADE

2009-09-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

THE love of man and woman is as fire,
To warm, to light, but surely to consume
And self-consuming die. There is no room
For constancy and passionate desire.
We stand at last beside a wasted pyre,
Touch its dead embers, groping in the gloom;
And where an altar stood, erect a tomb,
And sing a requiem to a broken lyre.
But comrade-love is as welding blast
Of candid flame and ardent temperature:
Glowing most fervent, it doth bind more fast;
And melting both, but makes the union sure.
The dross alone is burnt—till at the last
The steel, if cold, is one, and strong and pure

James Jeffrey Roche.

FAREWELL BUT WHENEVER

2009-09-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

FAREWELL!—but whenever you welcome the hour
That awakens the night-song of mirth in your bower,
Then think of the friend who once welcomed it too,
And forgot his own griefs, to be happy with you.
His griefs may return— not a hope may remain
Of the few that have brightened his pathway of pain—
But he ne’er can forget the short vision that threw
Its enchantment around him while lingering with you!

And still on that evening when Pleasure fills up
To the highest top-sparkle each heart and each cup,
Where’er my path lies, be it gloomy or bright,
My soul, happy friends! Will be with you that night—
Shall join in your revels, your sports, and your wiles,
And return to me, beaming all o’er with your smiles—
Too blest if it tell me that, mid the gay cheer
Some kind voice has murmured, “I wish he were here!”

Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy;
Which come, in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled;
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.

Thomas Moore.

A WINTER WISH

2009-09-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

OLD wine to drink!—
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff

Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,And ripened ‘neath the blink
Of India’s sun!
Peat whiskey hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter,—
Forgetting not
Good stout old English porter.

Old wood to burn!—
Ay, bring the hillside beech
From where the owlets meet and screech,
And ravens croak;
The crackling pine, and cedar sweet;
Bring too clump of fragrant peat,
Dug ‘neath the fern;
The knotted oak,
A fagot too, perhaps,
Whose bright flame, dancing, winking,
Shall light us at our drinking;
While the oozing sap
Shall make sweet music to our thinking.
Old books to read!—
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ,
Time-honored tomes!
The same my sire scannèd before,
The same my grandsire thumbèd o’er,
The same his sire from college bore,
The well-earned meed
Of Oxford’s domes;
Old Homer blind,
Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur’s olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase markham’s venerie—
Nor leave behind
The Holy Book by which we live and die.

Old friends to talk!—
Ay, bring those chosen few,
The wise, the curtly, and the true,
So rarely found;
Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk!
Bring WALTER good:
With soulful FRED; and learned WILL,
And thee, my alter ego (dearer still For every mood).
These add a bouquet to my wine!
These add a sparkle to the pine!
If these I tine
Can books, or fire or wine be good?

Robert Hinckley Messinger.

A PLEA

2009-09-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

GIVE me one friend, just one, who meets
The needs of all my varying moods;
Be we in noisy city streets,
Or in dear Nature’s solitudes.

One who can let the World go by,
And suffer not a minute’s pang;
Who’d dare to shock propriety
With me, and never care a hang.

Who in my rarely righteous streaks,
Should love me, — love me not the less
When I am given to outbreaks
Of pure, besotted selfishness.

One who, when I am sick and glum,
Can lay conventious on the shelf,
And just for my dear sake become
A blooming heathen, like myself.

One who can share my grief or mirth,And know my days to praise or curse;
And rate me just for what I’m worth,
And find me still, —Oh, not so worse!

Give me one friend, for peace or war,
And I shall hold myself well-blest,
And richly compensated for
The cussedness of all the rest.

Esther M. Clark

A SENTIMENT

2009-09-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

THE pledge of Friendship! It is still divine,
Though watery floods have quenched its burning wine;
Whatever vase the sacred drops may hold,
The gourd, the shell, the cup of beaten gold,
Around its brim the hand of Nature throws
A garland sweeter than the bouquet’s rose.
Bright are the bushes of the vine-wreathed bowl,
Warm with the sunshine of Anacreon’s soul,
But dearer memories gild the tasteless wave
That fainting Sidney perished as he gave.
’T is the heart’s current lends the cup its glow,
Whate’er the fountain whence the draught may flow,—
The diamond dew-drops sparkling through the sand,
Scooped by the Arab in his sunburnt hand,
Or the dark streamlet oozing from the snow,
Where creep and crouch the shuddering Esquimaux;—
Ay, in the stream that ere again we meet,
Shall burst the pavement, glistening at our feet,
And stealing silent from its leafy hills,
Thread all our alleys with its thousand rills,—
In each pale draught if generous feeling blend,
And o’er the goblet friend shall smile on friend,
Even cold Cochituate every heart shall warm,
And genial Nature still defy reform.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS AT AN EARLY HOUR.

2009-09-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean,
On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when‘t is seen,
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.
The while let music wander round my ears,
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contending!
’T is not content so soon to be alone.

John Keats

SPARKLING AND BRIGHT

2009-08-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

SPARKILING and bright in liquid light,
Does the wine our goblets gleam in,
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.

Then fill to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

Oh! If Mirth might arrest the flight
Of Time through Life’s dominions,
We here a while would now beguile
The graybeard of his pinions,

To drink to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

But since Delight can’t tempt the wight,
Nor fond Regret delay him,
Nor Love himself can hold the elf,
Nor sober Friendship stay him,

We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker’s brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

Charles Fenno Hoffman

THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE

2009-08-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

A STREET there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Camps its name is —
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And there’s an inn not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case—
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is—
A sort of soup, or both, or brew,
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo;
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace;
All these you eat at Terré’s tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

Indeed, a rich and savory stew ’t is;
And true philosophers, methinks,
Who love all sorts of natural beauties,
Should love good victuals and good drinks.

Ah me! How quick the days are flitting!
I mind me of a time that’s gone,
When here I’d sit as now I’m sitting,
In this same place—but not alone.
A fair young form was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me.
—There’s no one now to share my cup.

I drink it as the Fates ordain it.
Come, fill it and have done with rhymes,
Fill up the lonely glass and drain it
In memory of dear old times.
Welcome the wine, whate’er the seal is;
And sit you down and say your grace
With thankful heart whate’er the meal is.
Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse!

William Makepeace Thackeray.

ODE TO BEN JONSON

2009-08-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

AH Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, The Triple Tun;
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.

My Ben
Or come again,
Or send to us
Why wit’s great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend:
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock, the store
Of such a wit, the world should have no more.

Robert Herrick.

TO BEN JONSON

2009-08-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring)
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent) is
Here our best haymaker (forgive me this;
It is our country’s style): in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid Wine.

Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters. What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one (from whence they came)
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life;— then when there hath been thrown.
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past; wit that might warrant be
Till that were cancelled; and, when we were gone,
We left an air behind us; which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
(right witty; though but downright fools) more wise

Only strong destiny, which all controls,
I hope hath left a better fate in store
For me, th friend, than to live ever poor,
Banished unto this home. Fate once again,
Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plain
The way of knowledge for me, and then I
(Who have no good but in thy company),
Protest it will my greatest comfort be,
To acknowledge all I have, to flow from thee!
Ben, when these Scenes are perfect, we’ll taste wine!
I’ll drink thy Muse’s health! Thou shalt quaff mine!

Francis Beaumont

LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN

2009-08-28T16:31:00.001-07:00

SOULS of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sing-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new-old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

John Keats

WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN?

2009-08-28T16:25:00.000-07:00

When shall we three meet again?
When shall we three meet again?
Oft shall glowing hope expire,
Oft shall wearied love retire,
Oft hall death and sorrow reign,
Ere we three shall meet again.

Though in distant lands we sigh,
Parched beneath a hostile sky;
Though the deep between us rolls,
Friendship shall unite our souls.

Still in Fancy’s rich domain
Oft shall we three meet again.

When the dreams of life are fled,
When the waste lamps are dead;
When in cold oblivion’s shade
Beauty, power, and fame are laid;
Where immortal spirits reign
There shall we three meet again.

John Keats

THE WELCOME

2009-08-22T15:32:00.001-07:00

One night Shah Mahmúd, who had been of late
Somewhat distempered with Affairs of State,
Strolled through the Streets disguised, as wont to do-
And coming to the Baths, there on the Flue
Saw the poor Fellow who the Furnace fed
Sitting beside his Water jug and Bread.
Mahmúd stept in –sat down- unasked took up
And tasted of the untasted Loaf and Cup,
Saying within himself, “Grudge but a bit,
And, by the Lord, your Head shall pay for it!”
So, having rested, warmed and satisfied
Himself without a Word on either side,
And then at last his Host broke silence-“So?-
Art satisfied? Well, Brother, and Day
or Night, remember, when you come this Way
and want a bit of Provender-why, you
Are welcome, and if not-why, welcome too.”-
The Sultan was so tickled with the whim
Of his quaint Entertainment and of him
Who offered it, that many a Night again
Stoker and Shah forgathered in that vein-
Till, the poor Fellow having stood the Test
Of true Good-fellowship, Mahmúd confessed
One Night the Sultan that had been his Guest:
And in requital of the scanty Dole
The poor Man offered with so large a soul,
Bid him ask any Largess that he would-
A Throne-if he would have it, so he should.
The Poor Man kissed the Dust, and “All”, said he,
“I ask is what and where I am to be;
If but the Shah from time to time will come
As now, and see me in the lowly Home
His presence makes a Palace, and my own
Poor Flue more royal than another’s Throne.

From the Persian of Faríd-Uddin Attat.
Free translation of Edward Ftizgerald.

OLD OCTOBER

2009-08-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

HAIL, old October, bright and chill,
First freedman from the summer sun!
Spice high the bowl, and drink your fill!
Thank heaven, at last the summer’s done!

Come, friend, my fire is burning bright,
A fire’s no longer out of place,
How clear it glows! (there’s frost to-night,)
It looks white winter in the face.

You’ve been to “Richard.” Ah! you have seen
A noble play: I’m glad you went;
But what on earth does Shakespeare mean
By “winter of our discontent”?

Be mine the tree that feeds the fire!
Be mine the sun knows when to set!
Be mine the months when friends desire
To turn in here from cold and wet!

The sentry sun, that glared so long
Overhead, deserts his summer post;
Ay, you may brew it hot and strong:
“The joys of winter”-come, a toast!

Shine on the kangaroo, thou sun!
Make far New Zeland faint with fear!
Don’t hurry back to spoil our fun,
Thank goodness, old October’s here!

Thomas Constable.

THE HOUSEHOLD DIVINITY

2009-08-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

From “A winter evening Hymn to my Fire”

BEAUTY on my hearth-stone blazing!
To-night the triple Zoroaster
Shall my prophet be and master:
To-night will I pure Magian be,
Hymns to thy sole honor raising,
While thou leapest fast and faster,
Wild with self-delighted glee,
Or sinkest low and lowest faintly
As an aureole still and saintly,
Keeping cadence to my praising
Thee! still thee! and only thee!

********************************

O thou of home the guardian Lar,
And, when our earth hath wandered far
Into the cold, and deep snow covers
The walks of our New England lovers,
Their sweet secluded evening-star!
It was with thy rays the English Muse
Ripened her mild domestic hues;
It was by thy flicker that she conned
The fireside wisdom that enrings
With light from heaven familiar things;
By thee she found the homely faith
In whose mild eyes thy comfort stayed,
When Death, extinguishing his torch,
Gropes for the tatch-string in the porch;
The love that wanders not beyond
His ealiest nest, but sits and sings
While children smooth his patient wings:
Therefore with thee I love to read
Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs
Life in the withered words! how swift recede
Time’s shadows! and how glows again
Through its dead mass the incandescent verse,
As when upon the anvils of the brain
It littering lay, cyclopically wrought
By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet’s thought!
Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred,
The aspirations unattained,
The rhythms so rathe and delicate,
The bent and strained
And broke, beneath the somber weight
Of any airiest mortal world.

What warm protection dost thou bend
Round curtained tal of friend with friend,
While the gray snow-storm, held aloof,
To softest outline rounds the roof,
Or the rude North with baffled strain
Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane!
Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne
By Morpheus’ daughter, she that seems
Gifted upon her natal morn
By him with fire, by her with dreams,
Nicotia, dearer to the Muse
Than all the grapes’ bewildering juice,
We worship, unforbid of thee;
And, as her incense floats and curls
In airy spires and wayward whirls,
Or poises on its tremulous stalk
A flower of frailest revery,
So winds and loiters, idly free,
The current of unguided talk,
Now laughter-rippled, and now caught
In smooth dark pools of deeper thought.
Meanwhile thou mellowest every word,
A sweetly unobtrusive third;
For thou hast magic beyond wine,
To unlock natures each to each;
The unspoken thought thou canst divine:
Thou fill’st the pauses of the speech
With whispers that to dream-land reach,
And frozen fancy-springs unchain,
In Artic outskirts of the brain;
Sun of all inmost confidences,
To thy rays doth the heart unclose
Its formal calyx of pretences,
That close against rude day’s offences,
And open its shy midnight rose!

James Russell Lowell.

INTER SODALES

2009-08-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

OVER a pipe the Angel of Conversation
Loosens with glee the tassels of his purse,
And, in a fine spiritual exaltation,
Hastens, a rosy spendthrift, to disburse
The coins new minted of imagination.
An amiable, a delicate animation
Informs our thoughts, and earnest we rehearse
The sweet old farce of mutual admiration
Over a pipe.

Heard in this hour-s delicious divagation
How soft the song! the epigram how terse!
With what a genius for admiration
We rearrange the rumbling universe,
And map the course of man’s regeneration
Over a pipe!

William Ernest Henley.

RECOLLECTED PLEASURES

2009-08-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

From “Letter to Maria Gisborne”, Leghorn, July I, 1820

THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralist call worm,
Sit spinning still round his decaying from,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought-
No net of words in garish colors wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day-
But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which most remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.

…………………………………………………

You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not.-I demand if ever we
Shall meet as then we met;- and she replies;
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
“I know the past alone –but summon home
My sister Hope,-she speaks of all to come.”
But I, an old diviner, who knew well
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
Of our communion-how on the sea-shore
We watcht the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;-

…………………………………………………

Or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,-in joy and pain
Strtuck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;- or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!

………………………………………………..

Thou wert then to me
As in a nurse –when inarticulately
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the ethereal way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?

Percy Busshe Shelley.

SWEET CONVERSE

2009-08-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among he jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me to the steep-
Nature’s observatory-whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavilion’d where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

John Keats.

THE FAIR COMPANIONSHIP

2009-08-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

From “In Memoriam”

The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by trac that pleased us well,
Through four sweets years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow;

And we with singing cheered the way,
And, crowned with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:

But where the path we walked began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descend, following Hope,
There sat the Shadow feared of man;

Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dulled the murmur on the lip,

And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, though I walk in haste,
And think that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut
Or, breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloaked from head to foot,

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came
Or on to where the pathway leads;

And crying, How changed from where it ran
Through lands where not a leaf was dumb,
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of happy Pan:

When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;

And all we met was fair and good,
And all was food that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;

And many an old philosophy
On Argine heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.

I know that this was Life,- the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.

But this was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear
Because it needed help of Love:

Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love could cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

BRIGHT COLLEGE YEARS

2009-08-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Bright collegue years, with pleasure rife,
the shortest, gladdest years of life,
How swiftly are ye gliding by,
Oh why doth time so quickly fly!
The seasons come, the seasons go,
The earth is green, or white with snow,
But time and change shall naught avail
To break the friendships formed at Yale.

We all must leave this college home,
About the stormy world to roam;
But though the mighty ocean’s tide
Should us from dear old Yale divide,
As round the oak the ivy twines
The clinging tendrils of its vines,
So are our hearts close bound to Yale
By ties of love that never shall fail.

In after-life should troubles rise
To cloud the blue of sunny skies,
How bright will seem, through memory’s haze,
The happy, golden, bygone days!
Oh, let us strive that ever we
May let these words our watch-cry be,
Wherever upon life’s sea we sail:-
“For God, for Country, and For Yale!”

Henry S. Durand.

MEMORY

2009-08-22T14:45:00.001-07:00

Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods,
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt,
And night by night the monitory blast
Wails in the keyhole, telling how it passed
Over empty fields, nor upland solitudes,
Or grim, wide wave; and now the power is felt
Of melancholy, tender in its moods
Than any joy indulgent Summer dealt.
Dear friends, together in the glimmering eve,
Pensive and glad, with tones that recognize
The soft invisible dew in each one’s eyes,
It may be, somewhat thus we shall have leave
To walk with Memory, when distant lies
Poor Earth, where we were wont to live and grieve.

William Allingham.

THE VALE OF AVOCA

2009-08-22T14:40:00.000-07:00

There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;
O, the last ray of feeling and life must depart
Here the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart!

Yet it was not that Nature had shed over the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;
It was not the soft magic of streamlet or hill,-
O, no! it was something more exquisite still.

It was that friends, the beloved of my bosom were near,
Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear,
And who felt how the best charms of nature improve,
When we see them reflected from looks that we love.

Sweet Vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best;
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.

Thomas Moore.

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

2009-08-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

From “As you like it,” Act II Scene 4

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither,
Here shall he see
No enemy,
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to lie I’m the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with that he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither,
Here shall he see
No enemy,
But winter and rough weather.

Willliam Shakespeare

THE JOYS OF THE ROAD

2009-08-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

To Richard Hovey

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;
a vargant’s morning wide and blue,
In early fall, when the winds walk, too;
A shadowy highway cool and brown,
Alluring up and enticing down
From purple glory to scarlet pomp;
And the striding heart from hill to hill;
The temper apple over the fence;
The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;
The palish asters along the wood,-
A lyric touch of the solitude;

An open hand, an easy shoe,
And a hope to make the day go through,-
Another to sleep with, and a third
To wake me up at the voice of a bird;
The resonant, far-listening morn,
And the hoarse whisper of the corn;
The crickets mourning their comrades lost,
In the night’s retreat from the gathering frost;
(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill,
As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?)

A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;
A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,
And a jug of cider on the board;
An idle noon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;
A scrap of gossip at the ferry;
A comrade neither glum nor merry,
Asking nothing, revealing naught,
But minting his words from a fund of thought,
A keeper of silence eloquent,
Needy, yet royally well content,
Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife,
And full of the mellow juice of life,
A taste of wine, with an eye for a maid,
Never too bold and never afraid,

Never heart-whole, never heart sick
(These are the things I worship in Dick),
No fidget and no reformer, just
A calm observer of ought and must,
A lover of books, but a reader of man,
No cynic and no charlatan,
Who never defers and never demands,
But, smiling, takes the world in his hands,-
Seeing it good as when God first saw
And gave it the weight of his will for law.

And oh the joy that is never won,
But follows and follows the journeying sun,
By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream,
A will-o’-the-wind, a light-o’-dream,
Delusion afar, deliht anear,
From morrow to morrow, from year to year,
A jack-o’-lantern, a fairy fire,
A dare, a bliss and a desire!

The racy smell of the forest loam,
When the stealthy, sad heart leaves go home;
(O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you,
Of the mould and the sun, and the wind and the dew!)
The broad gold wake of the afternoon;
The silent fleck of the cold new moon:
The sound of the hollow sea’s release
From stormy tumult to starry peace;
With only another league to wend,
And two brown arms at the journey’s end:
These are the joys of the open road-
For him who travels without a load.

Bliss Carman.

A MILE WITH ME

2009-08-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

O, WHO will walk a mile with me
Along life’s merry way?
A comrade blithe and full of glee,
Who dares to laugh out loud and free,
And let his frolic fancy play,.
Like a happy child, through the flowers gay
That fill the field and fringe the way
Where he walks a mile with me.

And who will walk a mile with me
Along life’s weary way?
A friend whose heart has eyes to see
The stars shine out o’er the darkening lea,
And the quiet rest at the end o’ the day,-
A friend who knows, and dares to say,
The brave, sweet words that cheer the way
Where he walks a mile with me.

With such a comrade, such a friend,
I fain would walk till journeys end,
Through summer sunshine, winter rain,
And then?- Farewell, we shall meet again!

Henry van Dyke.

THE LOVE OF COMRADES

2009-08-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

From “Calamus”

In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all standards hitherto published –from
the pleasures, profits, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed to my Soul;
Clear to me now, standards not yet published-
clear to me that my Soul,
That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices
Only in comrades;
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talked to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abashed –for in this secluded spot I can
Respond as I would not dare elsewhere,
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself,
yet contains all the rest,
Resolved to sing no songs to-day but those of
manly attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,
Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love,
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth Month, in my forty-first year,
O proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,
To tell the secret of my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.
…………………………………………………
I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all
the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes,
and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities,
with their arms about each other’s necks.

…………………………………………………

I hear it is charged against me that I seek to destroy institutions;
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,

(What indeed have I in common with them?-
Or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Manhattan, and in every city of
These states, inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel
little or large, that dents the water,
Without edifices, or rules, or trustees, or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

Walt Whitman.

SOUL-COMMINGLING

2009-08-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Dear friend, I know not if such days and nights
Of fervent comradeship as we have spent,
Or if twin minds with equal ardor bent
To search the world’s unspeakable delights,
Or if long hours passed on Parnassian heights
Together in rapt interminglement
Of heart with heart on thought sublime intent,
Or if the spark of heaven-born fire that lights
Love in both breasts from boyhood, thus have wrought
Our spirits to communion; but I swear
That neither chance nor change nor time nor aught
That makes the future of our lives less fair,
Shall sunder us who once have breathed this air
Of soul commingling friendship passion fraught.

John Addington Symonds.

QUOTES ON COMRADESHIP

2009-08-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

“Comradeship is one of the finest facts and one of the strongest forces in life.”

Hugh Black

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”

Proverbs XXVII, 17.

“There my retreat the best companions grace,
Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place;
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.”

Alexander Pope

“For’ t is the bliss of friendship’s holy state
To mix their holy minds, and to communicate;
Though bodies cannot, souls can penetrate.”

John Dryden.

NEW AND OLD

2009-08-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Make new friends, but keep the old,
Those are silver, these are gold;
New-made friendships, like new wine,
Age will mellow and refine.
Friendships that have stood the test-
Time and change-are surely best;
Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,
Friendship never knows decay.
For’ mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we or youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die,
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast,
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old.
Those are silver, these are gold.

Unknown Author.

CHOICE OF A FRIEND

2009-08-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

from “Hamlet”, Act II Sc. 2

HAMLET.- Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation coped withal.
…Nay, do not think I flatter:
For what advancement may I hopoe from thee,
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,-
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please: Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

William Shakespeare

TOO LATE I STAYED

2009-08-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Lines to Lady A. Hamilton

Too late I stayed, -forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours:
How noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flowers!

And who, with clear account, remarks
The ebbings of his glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?

O, who to sober measurement
Time’s happy swiftness brings,
When birds of paradise have lent
Their plumage to his wings.

William Robert Spencer

LORD WALTER’S WIFE

2009-08-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

“But why do you go?” said the lady, while
both sate under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the
kraken beneath the sea blue.

“Because I fear you,” he answered; -“because
you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your
gold –colored hair.”

“O, that,” she said “is no reason!” Such knots
are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but
too much sun.”

“Yet farewell so,” he answered; -“the sun
stroke’s fatal at times.
I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop
rings still from the limes.”

“O that,”she said, “is no reason. You smell a
rose through a fence:
It two should smell it, what matter? who grumbles,
and where’s the pretense?”

“But, I,” he replied, “have promised another,
when love was free,
To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves
me.”

“Why, that,” she said, “is no reason. Love’s
always free I am told.
Will you vow to be safe from the headache on
Tuesday, and think it will hold?”.

“But you”, he replied, “have a daughter, a
young little child, who was laid
In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels
would make me afraid.”

“O that”, she said, “is no reason. The angels
keep out of the way;
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although
you should please me and stay.”

At which he rose up in his anger,-“Why, now,
you no longer are fair!
Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and
hateful, I swear.”

At which she laughed out in her scorn, -“These
men! O, these men overnice,
Who are shocked if a color not virtuous is frankly
put on by a vice.”

Her eyes blazed upon him-And you! You
bring us your vices so near
That we smell them! you think in our presence
a thought it would defame us to hear!

“What reason had you, and what right, -I appeal
to your soul from my life,-
To find me too fair as a woman Why, sir I
am pure and a wife.

“Is the day-star too fair up above you? it burns
you not. Dare you imply
I brushed you more close than the star does, when
Walter had set me as high?

“If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply
adapted too much
To uses unlawful and fatal. The praise!-shall
I thank you for such?

“Too fair?-not unless you misuse us! and surely
if, once in a while,
You attain to it, straightway you call us no longer
too fair, but too vile.

“A moment,-I pray your attention!- I have a
poor word in my head
I must utter, though womanly custom would set
it down better unsaid.

“You grew sir, pale to impertinence, once when
I showed you a ring.
You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter!
I’ve broken the thing.

“You did me the honor, perhaps, to be moved
at my side now and then
In the senses,-a vice, I have heard, which is
common to beasts and some men.

“Love’s a virtue for heroes!-as white as
the snow on high hills,
And immortal as every great soul is that struggles,
endures, and fulfils.

“I love my Walter profoundly,-you, Maude,
though you faltered a week,
For the sake of…what was it? an eyebrow?
or, less still, a mole on a cheek?

“And since, when all’s said, you are too noble to
stoop to the frivolous cant
About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle,
betray, and supplant,

“I determined to prove to yourself that,
whatever you might dream or avow
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me
than you have now.

“There! Look me full in the face!-in the face.
Understand, if you can,
That the eyes of such women as I am are clean
as the palm of man.

“Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for
fear we should cost you a scar,-
You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for
the women we are.

“You wronged me: but then I considered…
there’s Walter! And so at the end,
I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me,
in the hand of a friend.

“Have U hurt you indeed? We are quits then.
Nay, friend of my Walter be mine!
Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me
to ask him to dine.”

Elizabeth Barret Browning.

TO HOLD A FRIEND

2009-08-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

From “Hamlet,” Act I, Sc. 3

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel often proclaims the man;
And they in France, of best rank and station;
are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan often loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare.

WORTH KNOWING

2009-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

Time to me this truth hath taught,
It is a truth that’s worth revealing:
More offend from want of thought
Than from want of feeling.

If advice we would convey,
There’s a time we should convey it;
If we have but a word to say,
There is a time in which to say it.

Many a beauteous flower decays,
Though we tend it ever so much;
Something secret on its preys,
Which no human aid can touch.

So in many a loving breast
Lies some canker-grief concealed,
That, if touched, is more oppressed,
Left unto itself-is healed!

Often, unknowingly, the tongue
Touches on a chord so aching
That a word or accent wrong
Pains the heart almost to breaking.

Many a year of wounded pride,
Many a fault of human blindness,
Has been soothed or turned aside
By a quiet voice of kindness.

Time to me this truth hath taught,
It is a truth that is worth revealing:
More offend from want of thought
Than from want of feeling.

The Humbler Poets.

HEREDITARY FRIENDSHIP

2009-08-22T13:29:00.001-07:00

From “The Iliad”, Book VI

Now paused the battle (godlike Hector gone),
Where darin Glaucus and great Tydeus’ son
Between both armies met: the chiefs from far
Observed each other, and had marked for war
Near as they drew, Tydides thus began:
“What art thou, boldest of the race of man?
Our eyes till now that aspect never beheld?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I brave not heaven: but if the fruits of earth
Sustain thy life, and human be thy birth,
Bold as thou art, too prodigal of breath,
Approach, and enter the dark gates of death.”
“What, or form whence I am, or who my sire
(Replied the chief), can Tydeus’ son inquire?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

A city stands on Argos’ utmost bound
(Argos the fair, for warlike steeds renowned),
Æolian Sisyphus, with wisdom blessed,
In ancient time the happy wall possessed,
Then called Ephyre: Glaucus was his son;
Great Glaucus, father of Bellerophon,
Who over the sons of men in beauty shined,
Loved for that valor which preserves mankind.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

[Here Glaucus proclaims the valorous deeds of his grandfather, Bellerophon, and his happy marriage, “with two brave sons and one fair daughter blessed.”]

But when at last, distracted in his mind,
Forsook by heaven, forsaking humankind,
Wide over the Aleian field he choose to stray,
A long, forlon, uncomfortable way!
Woes heaped on woes consumed his wasted heart:
His beauteous daughter fell by Phœbe’s dart;
His eldest born by raging Mars was slain,
In combat on the Solymæan plain.
Hippolochus survived: from him I came,
The honored author of my birth and name;
By his decree I sought the Trojan town;
By his instructions learn to win renown,
To stand the first in worth as in command,
To add new honors to my native land,
Before my eyes my mighty sires to place,
And emulate the glories of our race.”
He spoke, and transport filled Tydides’ heart;
In earth the generous warrior fixed his dart,
Then friendly, thus the Lycian prince addressed:
“Welcome, my brave hereditary guest1
Thus eer let us meet, with kind embrace,
Nor stain the sacred friendship of our race.
Know, chief, our grandsires have been guests of old;
Œneus the strong, Bellerophon the bold:
Our ancient seat his honored presence graced,
Where twenty days in genial rites he passed.
The parting heroes mutual presents left;
A golden goblet was thy grandsire’s gift;
Œneus a belt of matchless work bestowed,
That rich with Tyrian dye refulgent glowed.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Mindful of this, in friendship let us join;
If heaven our steps to foreign land incline,
My guests in Argos thou, and I in Lycia thine.
Enough of Trojans to this lance shall yield,
In the full harvest of yon ample field;
Enough of Greeks shall dye thy spear with gore;
But thou and Diomed be foes no more.
Now change we arms, and prove to either host
We guard the friendship of the line we boast.”
Thus having said, the gallant chiefs alight,
Their hands they join, their mutual faith they light.

HOMER
(Translation of Alexander Pope).

PLATONIC

2009-08-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

I had sworn to be a bachelor, she had sworn to be a maid,
For we quite agreed in doubting whether matrimony paid;
Besides, we had our higher loves, —fair science ruled my heart,
And she said her young affections were all wound up in art.

So we laughed at those wise men who say that friendship cannot live
‘Twixt man and woman, unless each has something more to give:
We would be friends, and friends as true as ever were man and man;
I’d be a second David and she Miss Jonathan.

We scorned all sentimental trash,—vows, kisses, tears and sighs;
High friendship, such as ours, might well such childish arts despise;
We liked each other, that was all, quite all there was to say,
So we just shook our hands upon it, in a business sort of way.

We shared our secrets and our joys, together hoped and feared,
With common purpose sought the goal that young Ambition reared;
We dreamed together of the days, the dream-bright days to come,
We were strictly confidential, and we called each other “chum.”

And many a day we wandered together over the hills,
I seeking bugs and butterflies, and she, the ruined mills
And rustic bridges, and the like, that picture-makers prize
To run in with their waterfalls, and grooves, and summer skies.

And many a quiet evening, in hours of silent ease,
We floated down the river, or strolled beneath the trees,
And talked, in long gradation from the poets to the weather,
While the western skies and my cigar burned slowly out together.

Yet through it all no whispered word, no tell-tale glance or sigh,
Told aught of warmer sentiment than friendly sympathy.
We talked of love as coolly as we talked of nebulæ,
And thought no more of being one than we did of being three.

………………………………………………………………………….

“Well, goodbye, chum!” I took her hand, for the time had come to go.
My going meant our parting, when to meet, we did not know.
I had lingered long, and said farewell with a very heavy heart;
For although we were but friends, it is hard for honest friends to part.

“Goodbye old fellow! don’t forget your friends beyond the sea,
And some day, when you have lots of time, drop a line or two to me.”
The words came lightly, gayly, but a great sob, just behind,
Welled upward with a story of quite a different kind.

And then she raised her eyes to mine, —great liquid eyes of blue,
Filled to the brim, and running over, like violet cups of dew;
One long, long glance, and then I did, what I never did before —
Perhaps the tears meant friendship, but I’m sure the kiss meant more.

William Rogers Terrett.