Poems (Howard)/An Unknown Friend

by Hattie Howard

An Unknown Friend.

I've grown to love that unknown friend,
On whom my grateful thoughts depend;
And wish I might some message send
 My gratitude expressing,
For bountiful, Thanksgiving cheer
That comes with each recurring year,
And proves "a friend is ever near,"
 Whose love invokes my blessing.

I marvel who that one may be,
Who kindly deigns to favor me
With such substantial sympathy,
 And whether man or woman
Does this the welcome gift bestow—
More blest than I in doing so—
I'm sure the friend I long to know
 Is more divine than human.

My secret thoughts oft cling around
One whom true honor long hath crowned
Whose noble heart, by chance I found,
 My devious way pursuing;
From whose right hand, where'er it goes,
True bounty, like a river, flows;
And still, the prudent left hand knows
 Not what the right is doing.

Again I wonder—till I fain
Believe the picture in my brain,
That fades but to return again,
 Can surely be no other
Than One whom all unite to praise;
Who searches out life's thorny ways,
And to each fainting heart displays
 The kindness of a brother.

Thus every day I cogitate,
With anxious heart, and longing, wait
To know the friend whom happy Fate
 To me hath kindly given;
But, if my hope I must resign,
And may not know, or take in mine
The hand that gives—so near divine—
 It will be known in Heaven.