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:
Theirs is the life that never ends;
Immortal beings are my friends.
They toil not, neither do they spin;
Yet none is meanly drest;
And some are clad in costly skin,
And some in silken vest;
And everyone who sees commends
The decent habits of my friends.
And some are short, and some are tall;
Some portly, and some spare;
Here is a group of pygmies small,
A Tom Thumb family; there
A Brobdingnagian row extends,
The best-informed among my friends.
Wot one among them all is low,
A fellow to be spurned;
And none is ever rude, although
Their backs are often turned.
No observation that offends
Is dropped by any of my friends.
And some are steeped in classic lore;
Some brim with wisdom sage;
And some can trace a far-off shore,
Or paint a former age;
And each his talent freely lends,
For talented are all my friends.
Some tell of deeds and lives sublime
And triumphs over foes;
Some weave a spell of lofty rhyme,
Some charm with stately prose;
And here and there a mind unbends
Familiarly among my friends.
In diction antiquated, quaint,
Or with a modern sound,
They speak their thoughts without restraint,
Although they're mostly bound;
And cease to speak when none attends,
A valued feature of my friends.
Although they shun the thoughtless crowd,
The frivolous disdain,
Their titles have not made them proud,
Nor all their pages vain;
No common mortal less pretends,
None can be opener than my friends.
They care not that they've all been cut,
A number by myself,
And often taken down, and put
As often on the shelf;
My estimation makes amends
For such ill-treatment of my friends.
An ever-fresh, unfailing source
Of thought and sympathy,
What hours of goodly intercourse
They have afforded me!
I cannot doubt that heaven still sends
Us angels while I have my friends.
If he who sits at home in gloom,
Or rushes here and there,
Will put a bookshelf in his room
And furnish it with care,
He'll bless the evenings that he spends
With such companions as my friends.