Polish? Not much, but who cares for that, if the heart be as true as steel,

And the kindly eyes look straight into yours, with

a look you can almost feel;

And the voice rings true in its welcome, though the sound be a trifle gruff?

If that's what you call rough manners, I own I prefer them rough.

There's many a nobleman, born and bred, with money in heaps to spend,

Rudolph
Chambers
Lehmann

in mem

ory of Bill

Asplen

And a mincing voice and a shiny hat, and manners and style no end;"

But I know that if they went missing I should feel pretty happy still,

If I only could have another day and a shake of the hand with Bill.

So, whene'er I turn my eye
Back upon the days gone by,

Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,
Friends that closed their course before me.

Oh, where do my forever losses tend?
I could already by some buried friend
Count my unhappy years; and should the sun
Leave me in darkness, as this loss hath done,
By those few friends I have yet to entomb
I might, I fear, account my years to come.

If we choose our friends for what they are, not for what they have, and if we deserve so great a blessing, then they will be always with us, preserved in absence, and even after death in the amber of memory.

Ludwig

Uhland in "The Passage"

William Browne laments his lost friends

Lord Avebury in "The Pleasures of Life"

William Penn in "Fruits of Solitude"

Robert Louis Stevenson

Elizabeth
Stuart
Phelps

Percy Bysshe

Shelley

Thomas

Gray

J. Gibson
Lockhart

Hafiz

Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same divine principle: the root and record of their friendship. This is the comfort of friends, that they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

There are kind hearts still, for friends to fill,
And fools to take and break them;

But the nearest friends are the auldest friends,
And the grave's the place to seek them.

The unfinished friendships of this life are at once its dreariest experiences, and most glorious hopes,

And as slow years pass, a funereal train,
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend,
Following it like its shadow.

Dear lost companions

Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear, as the ruddy, ruddy drops that warm my
heart.

It is an old belief

That on some solemn shore,

Beyond the sphere of grief,

Dear friends shall meet once more.

I have heard a sweet word which was spoken by Jacob, the old man of Canaan: "No tongue can express what means the separation of friends."

Even the death of friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray their funerals, and their memories will be encrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our friends have no place in the graveyard.

Now who will tell me aright

The way my lost companion went in the night?
My vanished comrade who passed from the roofs

of men,

And will not come again.

Of them who, wrapt in earth so cold,
No more the smiling day shall view,

Should many a tender tale be told,

For many a tender thought is due.

These are the old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry.

I never stand above a bier and see

The seal of death set on some well-loved face But I think, "One more to welcome me,

When I shall cross the intervening space Between this land and that one over there; One to make the strange Beyond seem fair.

Some tears fell down my cheeks and then I smiled,
As those smile who have no face in the world
To smile back to them. I had lost a friend.

Henry
David
Thoreau

Bliss
Carman

John

Lang-
horne

Thomas
Macau-

lay

Ella
Wheeler
Wilcox

Elizabeth
Browning

John Rioux

Lord Вугод

Arabic Manuscript

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Henry Wads

worth

Long

fellow

We call that person who has lost his father an orphan; and a widower, that man who has lost his wife. And that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing his friend, by what name do we call him? Here every human language holds its peace in impotence.

But who with me shall hold thy former place?
Thine image what new friendship can efface,
Ah! none! A father's tears will cease to flow,
Time will assuage an infant brother's woe;
To all save one is consolation known,
Where solitary friendship sighs alone.

I came to the place of my birth, and cried, "The friends of my youth where are they?" and echo answered "Where are they?"

Each closing circle of our sunlit sphere,
Seems to bring heaven more near:
Can we not dream that those we love
Are listening in the world above?

And smiling as they hear

The voices, known so well, of friends that still are dear.

Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started,

And now are divided one by one,

To stony channels in the sun!

Come back! ye friends whose lives are ended,

Come back with all the light attended,

Which seemed to darken and decay,

When ye arose and went away.

Some people never seem to appreciate their friends until they have lost them.

Then in the eternal Father's smile,
Our soothed, encouraged souls will dare
To seem as free from pride and guile,

As good and generous as they are.

Then shall we know our friends! though much
Will have been lost—the help in strife,

The thousand sweet, still joys of such
As hand in hand face earthly life-

Though these be lost, there will be yet
A sympathy august and pure;

Ennobled by a vast regret,

And by contrition seal'd thrice sure.

Lord
Avebury

Matthew
Arnold

in "Swit-
zerland"

I saw a dead man's finer part

Shining within each faithful heart

Thomas
Hardy

Of those bereft. Then said I, “This must be
His Immortality."

But he who has once stood beside the grave, to look back on the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent then are the wild love and the keen sorrow to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or to atone, in the lowest measure to the departed spirit, for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.

John
Ruskin