A MISTY memory -- faint, far away And vague and dim as childhood's long lost day -- Forever haunts and holds me with a spell Of awe and wonder indefinable: -- A grimy old engraving tacked upon A shoe-shop wall. -- An ancient temple, drawn Of crumbling granite, sagging portico, And gray, forbidding gateway, grim as woe; And o'er the portal, cut in antique line, The words -- cut likewise in this brain of mine -- "Wouldst have a friend? -- Wouldst know what friend is best? Have GOD thy friend: He passeth all the rest." Again the old shoemaker pounds and pounds Resentfully, as the loud laugh resounds And the coarse jest is bandied round the throng That smokes about the smoldering stove; and long, Tempestuous disputes arise, and then -- Even as all like discords -- die again; The while a barefoot boy more gravely heeds The quaint old picture, and tiptoeing reads There in the rainy gloom the legend o'er The lowering portal of the old church door -- "Wouldst have a friend? -- Wouldst know what friend is best? Have GOD thy friend: He passeth all the rest." So older -- older -- older, year by year, The boy has grown, that now, an old man here, He seems a part of Allegory, where He stands before Life as the old print there -- Still awed, and marveling what light must be Hid by the door that bars Futurity: -- Though, ever clearer than with eyes of youth, He reads with his @3old@1 eyes -- and tears forsooth -- "Wouldst have a friend? -- Wouldst know what friend is best? Have GOD thy friend: He passeth all the rest." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONG OF NATURE by RALPH WALDO EMERSON MY LOVE by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL A RENOUNCING OF LOVE by THOMAS WYATT PROLOGUE TO DRAMA ..... ANNIVERSARY OF CARRS' MARRIAGE by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN by ROBERT BURNS BALLAD TO THE TUNE OF BOBBING JOAN by PATRICK CAREY WRITTEN IN A QUARREL (DELIVERY PREVENTED BY RECONCILIATION) by WILLIAM COWPER |