Your ShelfYour Projects

EUGENE ROWELL

11%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 28, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 13.

Read the full edition

EUGENE ROWELL

By Eugene Rowell

Friendship

EUGENE ROWELL

Like odor of roses, sweet-scented and fair, That give their perfume to the soft, summer air; Like chiming of bells, silver-speaking and slow, That steals o’er the land when the sunset is low; Like voices of streams in sweet music that blend In the light of the stars, is the heart of a friend.
O, the fondest of memories are saved from the past, And the joys of the present are multiplied fast, When we know that the friends of the old, happy days In spirit attend all our wandering ways! What hopes of the future exultantly spring, What high aspirations, when friendship gives wing!
O, better a waif with a friend by his side Than a prince in a palace with friendship denied; And a man at his labor, the king on his throne, Are only two beggars when friendship is flown; For burdens of life who unfriended could bear? And what were a feast if no friendship were there?
We need on our way through life’s wide-reaching zone, Some being with sympathies linked with our own; Some kind heart in which we may trust and confide; Some wise head whose knowledge and counsel may guide; Who unto our secret confiding gives ear, With a smile for our joys, for our sorrows a tear:
Who mirrors our souls in the well-spring of love, Like waters that image the forest above,
O, take all the blessing the world can bestow, The wealth and the fame and the pomp and the show; But leave me, to brighten my days to the end, The unshaken faith of the heart of a friend!