"I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
"Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."
"Do you know," I said, "that this expresses exactly what a poet wants? It is not admiration, it is sympathy. Poems are test papers, put in the atmosphere of life to detect this property; we can find by them who really feel with us; and those who do, whether near or far, are friends. The making of friends is the most precious gift for which poetic utterance is given."
"I don't think," said she, "you should say 'make friends'—friends are discovered, rather than made. There are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things like poetry, music, and painting, are like the free-mason's signs—they reveal the initiated to each other."