HE

Let us be friends.    My life is sad and lonely,
While yours with love is beautiful and bright.
Be kind to me:    I ask your friendship only.
No Star is robbed by lending darkness light.

SHE

I give you friendship as I understand it,
A sentiment I feel for all mankind.

HE

Oh, give me more; may not one friend command it?

SHE

Look in the skies, 'tis there the star you'll find;
It casts its beams on all with equal favour.

HE

I would have more than what all men may claim.

SHE

Then your ideas of friendship strongly savour
Of sentiments which wear another name.

HE

May not one friend receive more than another?

SHE

Not man from woman and still remain a ...

If every friend who meditates
    In soft, unspoken thought
With winning courtesy and tact
The doing of a kindly act
    To cheer some lonely lot,
Were like the friend of whom I dream,
Then hardship but a myth would seem.

If sympathy were always thus
    Oblivious of space,
And, like the tendrils of the vine,
Could just as lovingly incline
    To one in distant place,
'Twould draw the world together so
Might none the name of stranger know.

If every throb responsive that
    My ardent spirit thrills
Could, like the skylark's ecstasy,
Be vocal in sweet melody,
    Beyond dividing hills
In octaves of the atmosphere
Were music wafted to his ear.

If every friendship were like one,
    So helpful and so true,
To o...

1.

Few years have pass'd since thou and I
Were firmest friends, at least in name,
And Childhood's gay sincerity
Preserved our feelings long the same.


2.

But now, like me, too well thou know'st
What trifles oft the heart recall;
And those who once have loved the most
Too soon forget they lov'd at all.


3.

And such the change the heart displays,
So frail is early friendship's reign,
A month's brief lapse, perhaps a day's,
Will view thy mind estrang'd again.


4.

If so, it never shall be mine
To mourn the loss of such a heart;
The fault was Nature's fault, not thine,
Which made thee fickle as thou art.


5.

As rolls the Ocean's changing tide,
So human feelings e...

1.

Why should my anxious breast repine,
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine;
Affection is not dead.
In tracing back the years of youth,
One firm record, one lasting truth
Celestial consolation brings;
Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat,
Where first my heart responsive beat, -
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"


2

Through few, but deeply chequer'd years,
What moments have been mine!
Now half obscured by clouds of tears,
Now bright in rays divine;
Howe'er my future doom be cast,
My soul, enraptured with the past,
To one idea fondly clings;
Friendship! that thought is all thine own,
Worth worlds of bliss, that thought alone -
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"


3
...

Wilt thou my true friend be?
Then love not mine, but me.

Has then, the Paphian Queen at length prevail'd?
Has the sly little Archer, whom my Friend
Once would despise, with all his boyish wiles,
Now taken ample vengeance, made thee feel
His piercing shaft, and taught thy heart profane
With sacred awe, repentant, to confess
The Son of Venus is indeed a God?
I greet his triumph; for he has but claim'd
His own; the breast that was by Nature form'd
And destined for his temple Love has claim'd.

The great, creating Parent, when she breathed
Into thine earthly frame the breath of life,
Indulgently conferr'd on thee a soul
Of finer essence, capable to trace,
To feel, admire, and love, the fair, the good,
Wherever found, through all her various works.
And is not Woman, then, her fairest work,
Fairest, and oft her ...

A friend for you and a friend for me,
A friend to understand;
To cheer the way and help the day
With heart as well as hand:
With heart as well as hand, my dear,
And share the things we 've planned
A tried friend, a true friend,
A friend to understand!
A friend for you and a friend for me,
A friend to hear our call,
When, wrong or right, we wage the fight
With backs against the wall!
With backs against the wall, my dear,
When hope is like to fall
A tried friend, a true friend,
A friend to hear our call!
A friend for you and a friend for me,
To share with us that day
When our ship comes back and naught we lack
Of all for which men pray!
Of all for which men pray, my dear,
That long has gone astray
A tried friend, a true friend,

    There's a man I know -
    A likeable man -
    Whom you meanly wound
    Whenever you can,
    Remark with malice
    His task is done ill,
    He's poor of judgment
    And weak of will.
    I implore you, now,
    As that poor man's friend,
    Let persecution
    Have speediest end.

    Cease taunting the man
    With blunders he makes,
    Cease harping alway
    On wrongs and mistakes.
    Come, be his good friend -
    Hail fellow, well met -
    His failures forgive,
    And his faults forget.
    Who is the man you've
    Discouraged and blamed?
    The man is yourself -
    Are you not ashamed?

    For faults of the past
    Make ample amends,
    And you and yourself
    B...

A glass is good, a lass is good,
    And a pipe to smoke in cold weather,
The world is good and the people are good,
    And we're all good fellows together.

        After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
    Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
    In the intensity of its own fires,
        There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days,
        Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
    So after Love has led us, till he tires
    Of his own throes and torments and desires,
        Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze
        He beckons us to follow, and across
    Cool, verdant vales we wander free from care.
    Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
        Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
    We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
    And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

In these epigrams I have altered the form, which in the original is the elegiac distich.



Dear is my friend, but my foe too
Is friendly to my good;
My friend the thing shows I can do,
My foe, the thing I should.

        Friendship, as love, is but a name,
        Save in a concentrated flame;
        And thus, in friendships, who depend
        On more than one, find not one friend.

        A hare who, in a civil way,
        Was not dissimilar to GAY,
        Was well known never to offend,
        And every creature was her friend.
        As was her wont, at early dawn,
        She issued to the dewy lawn;
        When, from the wood and empty lair,
        The cry of hounds fell on her ear.
        She started at the frightful sounds,
        And doubled to mislead the hounds;
        Till, fainting with her beating heart,
        She saw the horse, who fed apart.
        "My friend, the hounds are on my track;
        Oh, let me refuge on your back!"

“Nobody's enemy save his own”,
(What shall it be in the end?),
Still by the nick-name he is known,
“Everyone’s Friend.”
“Nobody’s Enemy” stands alone
While he has money to lend,
“Nobody’s Enemy” holds his own,
“Everyone’s Friend”

“Nobody’s Enemy” down and out,
Game to the end,
And he mostly dies with no one about,
“Everyone’s Friend.”

I have a friend who came, I know not how,
Nor he. Among the crowd, apart,
I feel the pressure of his hand, and hear
In very truth the beating of his heart.

My soul had shut the door of abode,
So poor it seemed for any guest
To tarry there a night, until he came,
Asking, not entertainment, only rest.

Our hands were empty,-his and mine alike,
He says until they joined. I see
The gifts he brought; but where were mine
That he should say "I too have need of thee?"

Without the threshold of his heart I wait
Abashed, afraid to enter where
So radiant a company do meet,
Yet enter boldly, knowing I am there.

Whether his hand shall press my latch to-night,
To-morrow, matters not. He came
Unsummoned, he will come again; and I,
Though ...

Friend of my many years
When the great silence falls, at last, on me,
Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee,
A memory of tears,

But pleasant thoughts alone
Of one who was thy friendship’s honored guest
And drank the wine of consolation pressed
From sorrows of thy own.

I leave with thee a sense
Of hands upheld and trials rendered less
The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness
Its own great recompense;

The knowledge that from thine,
As from the garments of the Master, stole
Calmness and strength, the virtue which makes whole
And heals without a sign;

Yea more, the assurance strong
That love, which fails of perfect utterance here,
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere
With its immortal song.

The star which comes at close of day to shine
More heavenly bright than when it leads the morn,
Is friendship's emblem, whether the forlorn
She visiteth, or, shedding light benign
Through shades that solemnize Life's calm decline,
Doth make the happy happier. This have we
Learnt, Isabel, from thy society,
Which now we too unwillingly resign
Though for brief absence. But farewell! the page
Glimmers before my sight through thankful tears,
Such as start forth, not seldom, to approve
Our truth, when we, old yet unchilled by age,
Call thee, though known but for a few fleet years,
The heart-affianced sister of our love!

        "My never-failing friends are they,
        With whom I converse day by day."
                                            - Southey.


    Some to and fro for converse flit
        And on their friends intrude,
    Or shun society and sit
        In cheerless solitude;
    But I can sit, when night descends,
    At home among a thousand friends.

    The garish day is left behind,
        The scurry and the din;
    The hours of toil are out of mind,
        As if they had not been.
    No thought of morrow that impends
    Comes in between me and my friends.

    We reck not of the flight of time,
        To them a subject strange;
    They pass their days in a sublime
        Indifference to change:
    Their...

Within this little book of thine,
Are thoughts of many a friendly mind,
Express'd in words, on which you'll gaze
In after years, with feelings kind.

And while you're scanning o'er each page,
These lines I write, perchance you'll see,
And tho' they're penn'd by careless hand,
You'll know that they are penn'd by me.

Perhaps you'll think of school-days then,
Of happy school-days, long since past,
When you and I, in careless youth,
Thought that those days would always last.