Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MY FRIEND, by DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK Poet's Biography First Line: My friend wears a cheerful smile of his own Last Line: In the best of all company. Alternate Author Name(s): Mulock, Dinah Maria Subject(s): Friendship | ||||||||
MY Friend wears a cheerful smile of his own, And a musical tongue has he; We sit and look in each other's face, And are very good company. A heart he has, full warm and red As ever a heart I see; And as long as I keep true to him, Why, he'll keep true to me. When the wind blows high and the snow falls fast And we hear the wassailers' roar -- My Friend and I, with a right good-will We bolt the chamber door: I smile at him and he smiles at me In a dreamy calm profound, Till his heart leaps up in the midst of him With a comfortable sound. His warm breath kisses my thin gray hair And reddens my ashen cheeks; He knows me better than you all know, Though never a word he speaks: -- Knows me as well as some had known Were things -- not as things be. But hey, what matters? my Friend and I Are capital company. At dead of night, when the house is still, He opens his pictures fair; Faces that are, that used to be, And faces that never were: My wife sits sewing beside my hearth, My little ones frolic wild, Though -- Lilian's married these twenty years, And I never had a child. But hey, what matters? When those who laugh May weep to-morrow, and they Who weep be as those that wept not -- all Their tears long wiped away. I shall burn out, like you, my Friend, With a bright warm heart and bold, That flickers up to the last -- then drops Into quiet ashes cold. And when you flicker on me, old Friend, In the old man's elbow-chair, Or -- something easier still, where we Lie down, to arise up fair And young, and happy -- why then, my Friend, Should other friends ask of me, Tell them I lived and loved and died In the best of all company. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...YOU & I BELONG IN THIS KITCHEN by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JASON THE REAL by TONY HOAGLAND NO RESURRECTION by ROBINSON JEFFERS CHAMBER MUSIC: 17 by JAMES JOYCE CHAMBER MUSIC: 18 by JAMES JOYCE THE STONE TABLE by GALWAY KINNELL ALMSWOMAN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN TO AN ENEMY by MAXWELL BODENHEIM SONNET: 10. TO A FRIEND by WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES BY THE ALMA RIVER by DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK DOUGLAS, DOUGLAS, TENDER AND TRUE by DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK |
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