Friendship poems listing on Poemine.com [ page 18 of 65 ]

I mean to write with all my strength (It lately has been sadly waning) A ballad of enormous length - Some parts of which will need explaining. 1 Because (unlike the bulk of men Who write for fame or public ends) I turn a lax and fluent pen To talking of my private friends. 2 For no one, in our long decline, So dusty, spiteful and divided, Had quite such pleasant friends as mine, Or loved them half as much as I did. [1 But do not think I shall explain To any great extent. Believe me, I partly write to give you pain, And if you do not like me, leave me.] [2 And least of all can you complain, Reviewers, whose unholy trade is, To puff with all your might and main Biographers of single ladies.] . . . The Freshman ambles down the High, In love with everything he sees, He notes the very Midland sky, He sniffs a more than Midland breeze. "Can this be Oxford? This the place (He cries) "of which my father said The tutoring was a damned disgrace, The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead? "Can it be here that Uncle Paul Was driven by excessive gloom, To drink and debt, and, last of all, To smoking opium in his room? "Is it from here the people come, Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes, And stammer? How extremely rum! How curious! What a great surprise! "Some influence of a nobler day Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul's) Has roused the sleep of their decay, And flecked with light their ancient walls. "O! dear undaunted boys of old, Would that your names were carven here, For all the world in stamps of gold, That I might read them and revere. "Who wrought and handed down for me This Oxford of the larger air, Laughing, and full of faith, and free, With youth resplendent everywhere?" Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind, Young, callow, and untutored man, Their private names were . . .3 Their club was called REPUBLICAN. [3 Never mind.] . . . Where on their banks of light they lie, The happy hills of Heaven between, The Gods that rule the morning sky Are not more young, nor more serene Than were the intrepid Four that stand, The first who dared to live their dream. And on this uncongenial land To found the Abbey of Theleme. We kept the Rabelaisian plan: 4 We dignified the dainty cloisters With Natural Law, the Rights of Man, Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters. The library was most inviting: The books upon the crowded shelves Were mainly of our private writing: We kept a school and taught ourselves. We taught the art of writing things On men we still should like to throttle: And where to get the Blood of Kings At only half a crown a bottle. [4 The plan forgot (I know not how, Perhaps the Refectory filled it), To put a chapel in; and now We're mortgaging the rest to build it.] . . . Eheu Fugaces! Postume! (An old quotation out of mode); My coat of dreams is stolen away My youth is passing down the road. The wealth of youth, we spent it well And decently, as very few can. And is it lost? I cannot tell: And what is more, I doubt if you can. The question's very much too wide, And much too deep, and much too hollow, And learned men on either side Use arguments I cannot follow. They say that in the unchanging place, Where all we loved is always dear, We meet our morning face to face And find at last our twentieth year... They say (and I am glad they say) It is so ; and it may be so: It may be just the other way, I cannot tell. But this I know: From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends. . . . But something dwindles, oh! my peers, And something cheats the heart and passes, And Tom that meant to shake the years Has come to merely rattling glasses. And He, the Father of the Flock, Is keeping Burmesans in order, An exile on a lonely rock That overlooks the Chinese border. And One (Myself I mean no less), Ah! will Posterity believe it Not only don't deserve success, But hasn't managed to achieve it. Not even this peculiar town Has ever fixed a friendship firmer, But - one is married, one's gone down, And one's a Don, and one's in Burmah. . . . And oh ! the days, the days, the days, When all the four were off together: The infinite deep of summer haze, The roaring charge of autumn weather! . . . I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone, To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone.

Carmen Seculare. For the Year 1700. To The King

© Matthew Prior

Thy elder Look, Great Janus, cast

Into the long Records of Ages past:

Poem For Wei Ba

© Du Fu

Often a man's life is such

that he seldom sees his friends,

'On Active Service'; American Expeditionary Force (R. S., August 12, 1918)

© Edith Wharton

HE is dead that was alive.
How shall friendship understand?
Lavish heart and tireless hand
Bidden not to give or strive,
Eager brain and questing eye
Like a broken lens laid by.

For The Burns Centennial Celebration

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

His birthday.--Nay, we need not speak
The name each heart is beating,--
Each glistening eye and flushing cheek
In light and flame repeating!

A True Tale

© Mary Barber

Of Scripture--Heroes she would tell,
Whose Names they lisp'd, ere they could spell:
The Mother then, delighted, smiles;
And shews the Story on the Tiles.

Our Little Needs

© Edgar Albert Guest

A LITTLE more of loving, a little less of pain,
A little more of sunshine, a little less of rain;
A little more of friendship, a little less of strife
These are what we 're wanting to make the perfect life.

For The Same Book ( To Louisa C, For Her Album)

© John Kenyon

With all its best of sense and wit
Each Album's earlier leaves are writ;
No pagebut Love and Friendship on it
Shower dainty prose and perfumed sonnet;
While not one troubling thought comes nigh
Of future dearth and vacancy.

The Door Of Humility

© Alfred Austin

ENGLAND
We lead the blind by voice and hand,
And not by light they cannot see;
We are not framed to understand
The How and Why of such as He;

A Sentiment

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

The pledge of Friendship! it is still divine,

Though watery floods have quenched its burning wine;

Sonnet XXXVI.

© Charlotte Turner Smith

SHOULD the lone wanderer, fainting on his way,
Rest for a moment of the sultry hours,
And though his path through thorns and roughness lay,
Pluck the wild rose, or woodbine's gadding flowers,

A Song Of Other days

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet

Breathes soft the Alpine rose,

Sonnet VII.

© Christopher Pearse Cranch

THOSE times are gone, that circle thinned away,
And we who live, now scattered far and wide,
Each in our separate centres fixed abide,
Round which new interests now revolve and play

Lord! When Those Glorious Lights I See

Lord! when those glorious lights I see

With which thou hast adorned the skies,

The Dunciad: Book III.

But in her Temple's last recess inclos'd,

On Dulness' lap th' Anointed head repos'd.

Men in the Rough

Men in the rough--on the trails all new-broken--
Those are the friends we remember with tears;
Few are the words that such comrades have spoken--
Deeds are their tributes that last through the years.