~pOems On FRIENDSHIP~

believe in angels,

The kind that heaven sends,

I am surrounded by angels,

But I call them friends.

- Aizabel Parinas-

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 afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

-H. W. Longfellow-

When to the session 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, unused 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 vanish¹d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

- William Shakespeare-

Around the corner I have a friend,

In this great city that has no end;

Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,

And before I know it a year is gone,

And I never see my old friend's face,

For life is a swift and terrible race.

He knows I like him just as well

As in the days when I rang his bell

And he rang mine. We were younger then,

And now we are busy, tired men:

Tired with playing a foolish game,

Tired with trying to make a name.

"Tomorrow," I say, "I will call on Jim,

Just to show I am thinking of him."

But tomorrow comes - and tomorrow goes,

And the distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner! - yet miles away . .

"Here's the telegram, Sir. . .'Jim died today'.

"And that's what we get, and deserve in the end:

Around the corner, a vanished friend.

- Charles Hanson Towne -