Caroling Dusk/After the Quarrel

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

For other versions of this work, see After the Quarrel.

AFTER THE QUARREL^[1]

So we, who’ve supped the self-same cup,To-night must lay our friendship by;Your wrath has burned your judgment up,Hot breath has blown the ashes high. You say that you are wronged—ah, well,I count that friendship poor, at bestA bauble, a mere bagatelle,That cannot stand so slight a test.

I fain would still have been your friend,And talked and laughed and loved with you;But since it must, why, let it end;The false but dies, ’tis not the true.So we are favored, you and I,Who only want the living truth.It was not good to nurse the lie;’Tis well it died in harmless youth.

I go from you to-night to sleep.Why, what’s the odds? why should I grieve?I have no fund of tears to weepFor happenings that undeceive.The days shall come, the days shall goJust as they came and went before.The sun shall shine, the streams shall flowThough you and I are friends no more.

And in the volume of my years,Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,The page whereon your name appearsShall be forever sealed to me.Not that I hate you over-much,’Tis less of hate than love defied; Howe’er, our hands no more shall touch,We’ll go our ways, the world is wide.

1. Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.