A Friend

A Friend
A friend!—It seems a simple boon to crave,—

An easy thing to have.

Yet our world differs somewhat from the days

Of the romancer's lays.

A friend? Why, all are friends in Christian lands.

We smile and clasp the hands

With merry fellows o'er cigars and wine.

We breakfast, walk, and dine

With social men and women. Yes, we are friends;—

And there the music ends!

No close heart-heats,—a cool sweet ice-cream feast,—

Mild thaws, to say the least;—

The faint, slant smile of winter afternoons;—

The inconstant moods of moons,

Sometimes too late, sometimes too early rising,—

But for a night sufficing,

Showing a half-face, clouded, shy, and null,—

Once in a month at full,—

Lending to-night what from the sun they borrow,

Quenched in his light to-morrow.

If thou'rt my friend, show me the life that sleeps

Down in thy spirit's deeps.

Give all thy heart, the thought within thy thought.

Nay, I've already caught

Its meaning in thine eyes, thy tones. What need

Of words? Flowers keep their seed.

I love thee ere thou tellest me "I love."

We both are raised above

The ball-room puppets with their varnished faces,

Whispering dead commonplaces,

Doing their best to dress their lifeless thought

In tinselled phrase worth naught;

Or at the best, throwing a passing spark

Like fire-flies in the dark;—

Not the continuous lamp-light of the soul,

Which, though the seasons roll

Without on tides of ever-varying winds,

The watcher never finds

Flickering in draughts, or dim for lack of oil.

There is a clime, a soil,

Where loves spring up twin-stemmed from mere chance seed

Dropped by a word, a deed.

As travellers toiling through the Alpine snow

See Italy below;—

Down glacier slopes and craggy cliffs and pines

Descend upon the vines,

And meet the welcoming South who half-way up

Lifts her o'erbrimming cup,—

So, blest is he, from peaks of human ice

Lit on this Paradise;—

Who 'mid the jar of tongues hears music sweet;—

Who in some foreign street

Thronged with cold eyes catches a hand, a glance,

That deifies his chance,

That turns the dreary city to a home,

The blank hotel to a dome

Of splendor, while the unsympathizing crowd

Seems with his light endowed.

Many there be who call themselves our friends.

But ah! if Heaven sends

One, only one, the fellow to our soul,

To make our half a whole,

Rich beyond price are we. The millionnaire

Without such boon is bare,

Bare to the skin,—a gilded tavern-sign

Creaking with fitful whine

Beneath chill winds, with none to look at him

Save as a label grim

To the good cheer and company within

His comfortable inn.