A friend’s bosom
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind,
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day,
And from the all communicating air.
A friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red,
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth;
The mill round of our fate appears
A sun path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
The master my despair:
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through they friendship fair.
Perhaps we are paying too dearly for some of the boasted gains of our modern life. They tell us that in an ordinary lifetime a man really lives longer now than Methuselah did in his nearly ten centuries of antediluvian time. But in our swift, intense life we are losing some things that people used to enjoy in their more leisurely days. Friendship is one of these. There is no time for it now, for friendship takes time. We touch each other only lightly and superficially in our crowded days. We have many acquaintances, and we may give and receive help and inspiration even our hurried contacts. But in quieter, slower days, the people had time to live together, and enter into intimate relations in whom they impressed each other’s life and did much in shaping and colouring each other’s character.
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