THE GOSPEL OF FRIENDSHIP
Among the few definite, outstanding gospels that Brooke preached is seen the gospel of friendship. In "The Jolly Company" he says:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends, radiant and inseparable!"
"Light-hearted and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades, even so
God out of heaven may laugh to see.—"
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.
Then, again, in a poem which he called "Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia," he voices in an even more striking quatrain the immortality of friendship. What a thrill of hope runs through us here as we, who believe that life brings no richer gold than friendship, read this poet's thought that friendship too shall last beyond the years!
"And I know, one night, on some far height,
In the tongue I never knew,
I yet shall hear the tidings clear
From them that were friends of you.—"
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.