A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
_Epigraph to friendship_. R.W. EMERSON.
Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweet'ner of life! and solder of society!
_The Grave_. R. BLAIR.
Friendship is the cement of two minds,
As of one man the soul and body is;
Of which one cannot sever but the other
Suffers a needful separation.
_Revenge_. G. CHAPMAN.
A friendship that like love is warm,
A love like friendship steady.
_How Shall I Woo_? T. MOORE.
Friendship's the image of
Eternity, in which there's nothing
Movable, nothing mischievous.
_Endymion_. J. LILLY.
Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O the Joys, that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!
_Youth and Age_. S.T. COLERIDGE.
'T is sweet, as year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
How grows in Paradise our store.
_Burial of the Dead_. J. KEBLE.
I praise the Frenchman,[A] 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.
_Retirement_. W. COWPER.
[Footnote A: La Bruyère, says _Bartlett_.]
Friendship's an abstract of love's noble flame,
'Tis love refined, and purged from all its dross,
'Tis next to angel's love, if not the same.
_Friendship: A Poem_. CATH. PHILLIPS.
Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene;
Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.
_Night Thoughts_. DR. E. YOUNG.
A day for toil, an hour for sport,
But for a friend is life too short.
_Considerations by the Way_. R.W. EMERSON.
But sweeter none than voice of faithful friend;
Sweet always, sweetest heard in loudest storm.
Some I remember, and will ne'er forget.
_Course of Time, Bk, V_. R. POLLOK.
A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
One should our interests and our passions be,
My friend must hate the man that injures me.
_Iliad, Bk. IX_. HOMER. _Trans. of_ POPE.
Nor hope to find
A friend, but what has found a friend in thee.
_Night Thoughts. Night II_. DR. E. YOUNG.
Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven,
The noble mind's delight and pride,
To men and angels only given,
To all the lower world denied.
_Friendship: An Ode_. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
_Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.
Turn him, and see his threads: look if he be
Friend to himself, that would be friend to thee:
For that is first required, a man be his own;
But he that's too much that is friend to none.
_Underwood_. B. JONSON.
Lay this into your breast:
Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.
_Duchess of Malfy_. J. WEBSTER.
Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of
refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
_Evangeline_. H.W. LONGFELLOW.
True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.
_Cynthia's Revels_. B. JONSON.
Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago,
If thou but think'st him wronged, and mak'st his ear
A stranger to thy thoughts.
_Othello, Act iii. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.
Friendship above all ties does bind the heart;
And faith in friendship is the noblest part.
_King Henry V_. EARL OF ORRERY.
Be kind to my remains; and O, defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!
_Epistle to Congreve_. J. DRYDEN.
O summer friendship,
Whose flattering leaves, that shadowed us in
Our prosperity, with the least gust drop off
In the autumn of adversity.
_The Maid of Honor_. P. MASSINGER.
Such is the use and noble end of friendship,
To bear a part in every storm of fate.
_Generous Conqueror_. B. HIGGONS.
Friendship, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one you stint the flame.
* * * * *
'T is thus in friendships: who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.
_Fables: The Hare and many Friends_. J. GAY.
Like summer friends,
Flies of estate and sunneshine.
_The Answer_. G. HERBERT.
What the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer.
_Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves, by thumping on your back,
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon, or to bear it.
_On Friendship_. W. COWPER.
Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet,--perhaps may turn his blow;
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh! save me from the _Candid Friend_!
_New Morality_. G. CANNING.
Friendship is constant in all other things,
Save in the office and affairs of love.
_Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.
If I speak to thee in Friendship's name,
Thou think'st I speak too coldly;
If I mention Love's devoted flame,
Thou say'st I speak too boldly.
_How Shall I Woo_? T. MOORE.
Of all our good, of all our bad,
This one thing only is of worth,
We held the league of heart to heart
The only purpose of the earth.
_More Songs from Vagabondia: Envoy_. R. HOVEY.
It's an owercome sooth for age an' youth,
And it brooks wi' nae denial,
That the dearest friends are the auldest friends
And the young are just on trial.
_Poems: In Scots_. R.L. STEVENSON.
For friendship, of itself a holy tie,
Is made more sacred by adversity.
_The Hind and the Panther_. J. DRYDEN.
O Friendship, flavor of flowers! O lively sprite of life!
O sacred bond of blissful peace, the stalwart staunch of strife.
_Of Friendship_. N. GRIMOALD.