Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY: OF FRIENDSHIP, by CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY: OF FRIENDSHIP, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Choose judiciously thy friends; for to discard
Last Line: For an enraptured public to muse upon over their matutinal muffin.
Subject(s): Friendship – Selectivity; Tupper, Martin Farquhar (1810-1889); Imitation; Humor


Choose judiciously thy friends; for to discard them is undesirable,
Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daughter, than to drop thy H's.
Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light?
Hath she a position? and a title? and are her parties in the Morning Post?
If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind;
Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding:
So shalt thou become like unto her; and thy manners shall be "formed,"
And thy name shall be a Sesame, at which the doors of the great shall fly open:
Thou shalt know every Peer, his arms, and the date of his creation,
His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove:
Thou shalt kiss the hand of Royalty, and lo! in next morning's papers,
Side by side with rumours of wars, and stories of shipwrecks and sieges,
Shall appear thy name, and the minutiae of thy head-dress and petticoat,
For an enraptured public to muse upon over their matutinal muffin.





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