Friendship

When presses hard my load of care,
And other friends from me depart,
I want a friend my grief to share,
With faithful speech and loving heart.

I want a friend of noble mind,
Who loves me more than praise or pelf,
Reproves my faults with spirit kind,
And thinks of me as well as self--

A friend whose ear is ever closed
Against traducers' poison breath;
And, though in me be not disclosed
An equal love, yet loves till death--

A friend who knows my weakness well,
And ever seeks to calm my fears;
If words should fail the storm to quell,
Will soothe my fevered heart with tears--

A friend not moved by jealousy
Should I outrun him in life's race;
And though I doubt, still trusts in me
With loyal heart and cloudless face.

True friendship knows both joy and grief,
The sweetest pleasure, keenest pain;
Its sharpest pangs are ever brief,
Mere flitting clouds before the rain.

But soon the joy returns again
With bluer sky and brighter light;
The grief proves but a narrow glen
All full of flowers, though hid from sight.

And e'en in darkness we inhale
The fragrant odors love emits;
Friendship like this can never fail--
On love's strong throne its monarch sits.

True friendship is of greater worth
Than words, though they were solid gold.
To all the glittering gems of earth
I it prefer, a thousandfold.

One Friend I have who knows my heart,
And loves me with a changeless love;
I love Him, too--nor death can part
Us two, for we will love above.

A woman's love to His is faint;
No brother cleaves as close as He;
No seraph words could ever paint
The love this Friend now bears to me.

Joseph Horatio Chant

Joseph Horatio Chant was a Canadian poet known for his religious and nature-inspired verse. He worked as a farmer and later became an ordained Methodist minister, which influenced his poetry. Chant's work gained modest recognition for its sincere exploration of faith and the Canadian landscape, contributing to the country's early literary heritage. He lived and wrote during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Joseph Horatio Chant

A Gem

Joseph Horatio Chant, Simple Poetry

Canada

Joseph Horatio Chant, Simple Poetry

Queen Victoria

Joseph Horatio Chant, Simple Poetry

Love Better Than Knowledge

Joseph Horatio Chant, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Verses Selected From An Occasional Poem Entitled Valediction.

O Friendship! cordial of the human breast!
So little felt, so fervently professd!
Thy blossoms deck our unsuspecting years;
The promise of delicious fruit appears:
We hug the hopes of constancy and truth,
Such is the folly of our dreaming youth;
But soon, alas! detect the rash mistake
That sanguine inexperience loves to make;
And view with tears the expected harvest lost,
Decayd by time, or witherd by a frost.
Whoever undertakes a friends great part
Should be renewd in nature, pure in heart,
Prepared for martyrdom, and strong to prove
A thousand ways the force of genuine love.
He may be calld to give up health and gain,
To exchange content for trouble, ease for pain,
To echo sigh for sigh, and groan for groan,
And wet his cheeks with sorrows not his...

William Cowper

Epistle To A Friend.

Give me the wreath of friendship true,
Whose flowerets fade not in a breath:
From memory gaining many a hue,
To bloom beyond the touch of death.

And I will send it to thy home--
Thy home beloved, my faithful friend!
And pray for its perpetual bloom
And every bliss that earth can send.

Within its magic wreath I'd place
Hearts'-ease and every lovely flower;
To win thee by their matchless grace,
And cheer and bless the lonely hour.

When at the world's unkind return
Of all thy worth, and all thy care,
Thou may'st in spite of manhood turn,
And shed the sad, the bitter, tear.

Then, midst this holy grief of thine,
The thought of some true friend may bless,
And cheer the gloom like angel's smile,
Or sunbeam in a wilderness.
...

Thomas Gent

Friendship.

What virtue, or what mental grace
But men unqualified and base
Will boast it their possession?
Profusion apes the noble part
Of liberality of heart,
And dulness of discretion.


If every polishd gem we find,
Illuminating heart or mind,
Provoke to imitation;
No wonder friendship does the same,
That jewel of the purest flame,
Or rather constellation.


No knave but boldly will pretend
The requisites that form a friend,
A real and a sound one;
Nor any fool, he would deceive,
But prove as ready to believe,
And dream that he had found one.


Candid, and generous, and just,
Boys care but little whom they trust,
An error soon corrected
For who but learns in riper years
That man, when smoothest he appears,<...

William Cowper

My Friends.

        "My never-failing friends are they,
        With whom I converse day by day."
                                            - Southey.


    Some to and fro for converse flit
        And on their friends intrude,
    Or shun society and sit
        In cheerless solitude;
    But I can sit, when night descends,
    At home among a thousand friends.

    The garish day is left behind,
        The scurry and the din;
    The hours of toil are out of mind,
        As if they had not been.
    No thought of morrow that impends
    Comes in between me and my friends.

    We reck not of the flight of time,
        To them a subject strange;
    They pass their days in a sublime
        Indifference to change:
    Their...

W. M. MacKeracher

Friendship.

[From "Letters of Julius to Raphael," an unpublished Novel.]

Friend! the Great Ruler, easily content,
Needs not the laws it has laborious been
The task of small professors to invent;
A single wheel impels the whole machine
Matter and spirit; yea, that simple law,
Pervading nature, which our Newton saw.

This taught the spheres, slaves to one golden rein,
Their radiant labyrinths to weave around
Creation's mighty hearts: this made the chain,
Which into interwoven systems bound
All spirits streaming to the spiritual sun
As brooks that ever into ocean run!

Did not the same strong mainspring urge and guide
Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond?
Linked to thine arm, O Raphael, by thy side
Might I aspire to reach to souls beyond
Our earth, ...

Friedrich Schiller

If You Had a Friend

If you had a friend strong, simple, true,
Who knew your faults and who understood;
Who believed in the very best of you,
And who cared for you as a father would;
Who would stick by you to the very end,
Who would smile however the world might frown:
I'm sure you would try to please your friend,
You never would think to throw him down.

And supposing your friend was high and great,
And he lived in a palace rich and tall,
And sat like a King in shining state,
And his praise was loud on the lips of all;
Well then, when he turned to you alone,
And he singled you out from all the crowd,
And he called you up to his golden throne,
Oh, wouldn't you just be jolly proud?

If you had a friend like this, I say,
So sweet and tender, so strong and true,
Y...

Robert William Service