Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.
Emerson
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Each spoke words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted—ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between. But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been. |
Coleridge
Loss of Friends
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What greetings smile, what farewells wave, What loved ones enter and depart! The good, the beautiful, the brave, The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart! How conscious seems the frozen sod And beechen slope whereon they trod! The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends. |