Poems of Home and Country/The Friendships we formed
SOCIAL AMENITIES.
KIND GREETINGS.
THE FRIENDSHIPS WE FORMED.
HARVARD CLASS OF '29.
THE friendships we formed when life was still young;
The sports that we joined in, the songs we then sung,—
How oft from the chambers of memory they well,
Like the echo of waves in the beautiful shell.
The griefs we have met on the pathway of life,
The conquests won bravely amid the stern strife,
The light and the shadow, the joy and the woe,—
Form, like sunshine and raindrop, the radiant bow
That rests on the brow of the storms that are o'er,
That lights up the wave where it breaks on the shore,
That fades like the fair hues of hopes that are riven,
But sails, as it fades, thro' the blue arch of heaven.
The garlands we wove on the foretop of Time,
Tho' robbed of the freshness they wore in our prime;
The castles we built, so lofty and fair,
Tho' crumbled to dust, or vanished in air;
The barks we once freighted, with hearts beating high,
And launched on the sea without tremor or sigh,
Tho' sunk in the ocean or dashed on the reef,
The more grand their career, the more sad and more brief;
Tho' the plants we have loved to angels are given,
Having climbed o'er the wall, and are blooming in heaven,—
Still this chain of our love does not weaken with years,
Nor wear with the friction of toil and of tears;
Nor crumble in dust, nor vanish like breath;
Nor chill with the darkness, and shadow of death;
Nor perish in shipwreck, nor waste in the tomb,—
A thing to be lost in earth's gathering gloom.
Tho' Time's jealous fingers make all things decay,
We brighten its links as the years pass away;
We fastened the lock in our youth and our glee,
Then wandered abroad and have lost the sole key.
But the heart-clasp unites so firmly the chain
That 't is welded by time, and must ever remain.
January 6, 1859.