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Friendship
Here's to the four hinges of Friendship -Swearing, Lying, Stealing and Drinking.When you swear, swear by your country;When you lie, lie for a pretty woman,When you steal, steal away from bad companyAnd when you drink, drink with me.
Unknown
A ruddy drop of manly bloodThe surging sea outweighs,The world uncertain comes and goes;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 alone the sky is arched,Through thee the rose is red;All things through thee take nobler form,And look beyond the earth,The mill-round of our fate appearsA sun-path in thy worth.Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship.
What virtue, or what mental graceBut men unqualified and baseWill boast it their possession?Profusion apes the noble partOf liberality of heart,And dulness of discretion.If every polishd gem we find,Illuminating heart or mind,Provoke to imitation;No wonder friendship does the same,That jewel of the purest flame,Or rather constellation.No knave but boldly will pretendThe requisites that form a friend,A real and a sound one;Nor any fool, he would deceive,But prove as ready to believe,And dream that he had found one.Candid, and generous, and just,Boys care but little whom they trust,An error soon correctedFor who but learns in riper yearsThat man, when smoothest he appears,<...
William Cowper
When presses hard my load of care,And other friends from me depart,I want a friend my grief to share,With faithful speech and loving heart.I want a friend of noble mind,Who loves me more than praise or pelf,Reproves my faults with spirit kind,And thinks of me as well as self--A friend whose ear is ever closedAgainst traducers' poison breath;And, though in me be not disclosedAn equal love, yet loves till death--A friend who knows my weakness well,And ever seeks to calm my fears;If words should fail the storm to quell,Will soothe my fevered heart with tears--A friend not moved by jealousyShould I outrun him in life's race;And though I doubt, still trusts in meWith loyal heart and cloudless face.
Joseph Horatio Chant
Friend And Foe.
Dearly I love a friend; yet a foe I may turn to my profit;Friends show me that which I can; foes teach me that which I should.
Friedrich Schiller
Friendship And Love
A Dialogue: Addressed to a young Lady.Friendship:In vain thy lawless Fires contend with mine,Tho' Crouds unnumber'd fall before thy Shrine;Let Youths, who ne'er aspir'd to noble Fame,And the soft Virgin, kindle at thy Flame,Thee, Son of Indolence and Vice, I scorn,By Reason nourish'd, and of Virtue born.Love:Vain is that boasted Reason 'gainst my Dart,I pierce the Sage's, as the vulgar Heart,All Ages, Sexes, the soft Torment share,The hoary Patriot, and the blooming Fair.To narrow Limits is thy Sway confin'd,To some few Breasts, I triumph o'er Mankind.Friendship:From grov'ling Sources, ever springs thy Pow'r,Still varying Fancy, and frail Beauty's Flow'r:Then with its Cause the short liv'd A...
Mark Akenside
To One Who Pledged Her Friendship.
Within this false world we may count ourselves blest, If we have but one friend who is faithful and true; And so in your friendship contented I'll rest, And believe I have found that one blessing in you.
Freeman Edwin Miller
Dear friend, I pray thee, if thou wouldst be proving Thy strong regard for me,Make me no vows. Lip-service is not loving; Let thy faith speak for thee.Swear not to me that nothing can divide us - So little such oaths mean.But when distrust and envy creep beside us Let them not come between.Say not to me the depths of thy devotion Are deeper than the sea;But watch, lest doubt or some unkind emotion Embitter them for me.Vow not to love me ever and for ever, Words are such idle things;But when we differ in opinions, never Hurt me by little stings.I'm sick of words: they are so lightly spoken, And spoken, are but air.I'd rather feel thy trust in me unbroken Than list thy ...
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Dear friend, I pray thee, if thou wouldst be proving Thy strong regard for me,Make me no vows. Lip-service is not loving; Let thy faith speak for thee.Swear not to me that nothing can divide us - So little such oaths mean.But when distrust and envy creep beside us Let them not come between.Say not to me the depths of thy devotion Are deeper than the sea;But watch, lest doubt or some unkind emotion Embitter them for me.Vow not to love me ever and forever, Words are such idle things;But when we differ in opinions, never Hurt me by little stings.I'm sick of words: they are so lightly spoken, And spoken, are but air.I'd rather feel thy trust in me unbroken Than list thy words s...
Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churlsKnow the worth of Oman's pearls?Give the gem which dims the moonTo the noblest, or to none.Dearest, where thy shadow falls,Beauty sits and Music calls;Where thy form and favor come,All good creatures have their home.On prince or bride no diamond stoneHalf so gracious ever shone,As the light of enterpriseBeaming from a young man's eyes.
[From "Letters of Julius to Raphael," an unpublished Novel.]Friend! the Great Ruler, easily content,Needs not the laws it has laborious beenThe task of small professors to invent;A single wheel impels the whole machineMatter and spirit; yea, that simple law,Pervading nature, which our Newton saw.This taught the spheres, slaves to one golden rein,Their radiant labyrinths to weave aroundCreation's mighty hearts: this made the chain,Which into interwoven systems boundAll spirits streaming to the spiritual sunAs brooks that ever into ocean run!Did not the same strong mainspring urge and guideOur hearts to meet in love's eternal bond?Linked to thine arm, O Raphael, by thy sideMight I aspire to reach to souls beyondOur earth, ...
O thou most holy Friendship! wheresoeerThy dwelling befor in the courts of manBut seldom thine all-heavenly voice we hear,Sweetning the moments of our narrow span;And seldom thy bright foot-steps do we scanAlong the weary waste of life unblest,For faithless is its frail and wayward plan,And perfidy is mans eternal guest,With dark suspicion linkd and shameless interest!Tis thine, when life has reachd its final goal,Ere the last sigh that frees the mind be givn,To speak sweet solace to the parting soul,And pave the bitter path that leads to heavn:Tis thine, wheneer the heart is rackd and rivnBy the hot shafts of baleful calumny,When the dark spirit to despair is drivn,To teach its lonely grief to lean on thee,And ...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Verses Selected From An Occasional Poem Entitled Valediction.
O Friendship! cordial of the human breast!So little felt, so fervently professd!Thy blossoms deck our unsuspecting years;The promise of delicious fruit appears:We hug the hopes of constancy and truth,Such is the folly of our dreaming youth;But soon, alas! detect the rash mistakeThat sanguine inexperience loves to make;And view with tears the expected harvest lost,Decayd by time, or witherd by a frost.Whoever undertakes a friends great partShould be renewd in nature, pure in heart,Prepared for martyrdom, and strong to proveA thousand ways the force of genuine love.He may be calld to give up health and gain,To exchange content for trouble, ease for pain,To echo sigh for sigh, and groan for groan,And wet his cheeks with sorrows not his...
Good Fellowship
May good humor preside when good fellows meet,And reason prescribe when'tis time to retreat.
Loyalty
To Friendship drink, and then to Love,And last to Loyalty!The first of these were not enoughWithout the last, through whom we proveThat Love is Love, and right enoughWhat Friendship's self may be.So here 's to Loyalty!A sword he wears, but never a mask,So all the world may see.Let Friendship set him any task,Or Love no question doth he ask,But draws his sword and does his task,And never takes a fee.So here's to loyalty!
Madison Julius Cawein
To A Friend.
With kindly thoughts full oft we've met,And bow'd at Friendship's sacred shrine;Oh, may we ne'er those thoughts forget,But may they still our hearts entwine.May both retain those feelings long,Which prompt the words of friendly tongue,May I not fail to think of thee,Nor you to think of T. F. Young.
Thomas Frederick Young
Epistle To A Friend.
Give me the wreath of friendship true,Whose flowerets fade not in a breath:From memory gaining many a hue,To bloom beyond the touch of death.And I will send it to thy home--Thy home beloved, my faithful friend!And pray for its perpetual bloomAnd every bliss that earth can send.Within its magic wreath I'd placeHearts'-ease and every lovely flower;To win thee by their matchless grace,And cheer and bless the lonely hour.When at the world's unkind returnOf all thy worth, and all thy care,Thou may'st in spite of manhood turn,And shed the sad, the bitter, tear.Then, midst this holy grief of thine,The thought of some true friend may bless,And cheer the gloom like angel's smile,Or sunbeam in a wilderness....
Thomas Gent
Ad Finem
I like to think this friendship that we holdAs youth's high gift in our two hands to-dayStill shall we find as bright, untarnished goldWhat time the fleeting years have left us grey.I like to think we two shall watch the MayDance down her happy hills and Autumn foldThe world in flame and beauty, we grown oldStaunch comrades on an undivided way.I like to think of Winter nights made brightBy book and hearth-flame when we two shall smileAt memories of to-day--we two contentTo count our vanished dawns by candle-lightSeeing we hold in our old hands the whileThe gift of gold youth left us as she went.
Theodosia Garrison
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