Poems (Howard)/An Unknown Friend
An Unknown Friend.
I've grown to love that unknown friend, On whom my grateful thoughts depend; And wish I might some message send My gratitude expressing, For bountiful, Thanksgiving cheer That comes with each recurring year, And proves "a friend is ever near," Whose love invokes my blessing.
I marvel who that one may be, Who kindly deigns to favor me With such substantial sympathy, And whether man or woman Does this the welcome gift bestow—More blest than I in doing so—I'm sure the friend I long to know Is more divine than human.
My secret thoughts oft cling around One whom true honor long hath crowned Whose noble heart, by chance I found, My devious way pursuing; From whose right hand, where'er it goes, True bounty, like a river, flows; And still, the prudent left hand knows Not what the right is doing.
Again I wonder—till I fain Believe the picture in my brain, That fades but to return again, Can surely be no other Than One whom all unite to praise; Who searches out life's thorny ways, And to each fainting heart displays The kindness of a brother.
Thus every day I cogitate, With anxious heart, and longing, wait To know the friend whom happy Fate To me hath kindly given; But, if my hope I must resign, And may not know, or take in mine The hand that gives—so near divine— It will be known in Heaven.