Friendship Poems

A celebration of friendship in all its aspects--from the delight of making a new friend to the serene joys of longtime devotion. Poems about best friends, false friends, dear friends, lost friends, even animal friends. These poems have been selected from the work of great poets in all times and places, including Emily Dickinson, W.H. Auden, Henry Thoreau, Shakespeare, Sappho, Robert Frost, Rudyard Kipling, Walt Whitman, and many others.

Peter Washington is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.

Foreword

11

(4)

WHAT ARE FRIENDS?

Nature Assigns the Sun

15

(1)

Emily Dickinson

Friendship

16

(1)

Elizabeth Jennings

Quarrelling

17

(1)

Tao Tschung Yu

Friendship

18

(2)

Cole Porter

Unkindness

20

(2)

George Herbert

I Would but I Can't

22

(1)

Anon

A Friend in Need will be Around in Five Minutes

23

(2)

Ogden Nash

Friendship

25

(1)

Aztec

For Friends only

26

(3)

W. H. Auden

Oaths of Friendship

29

(1)

Anon

Friendship

30

(3)

Henry Thoreau

Relationships

33

(1)

Elizabeth Jennings

From The Church-Porch

34

(1)

George Herbert

Love and Friendship

35

(1)

Emily Bronte

From Friendship

36

(1)

Katherine Philips

Are Friends Delight or Pain?

37

(1)

Emily Dickinson

My Lovely Friends

38

(1)

Sappho

To me, Fair Friend

39

(1)

William Shakespeare

From Friendship

40

(5)

William Cowper

THE PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP

The Pleasures of Friendship

45

(1)

Stevie Smith

If You and I, Julius, old Friend

46

(1)

Martial

We Two Boys Together Clinging

47

(1)

Walt Whitman

Being her Friend

48

(1)

John Masefield

From An Epistele to Master John Selden

49

(1)

Ben Jonson

Companion - North-east Dug-out

50

(1)

Ivor Gurney

The Sunlight on the Garden

51

(2)

Louis Macneice

This Lime-tree Bower my Prison

53

(4)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sitting at Night

57

(1)

Om Ui-Gil

From The Choice

58

(1)

John Pomfret

At Lemmons

59

(1)

C. Day Lewis

My Old Friend Prepared a Chicken

60

(1)

Meng Hao-Jan

From An Epistle Answering to One

61

(4)

Ben Jonson

GOOD NEIGHBOURS

Mending Wall

65

(2)

Robert Frost

Neighbours

67

(1)

Rudyard Kipling

Nature Notes: Dandelions

68

(1)

Louis Machniece

Meeting

69

(2)

Boris Pasternak

La Gorgue

71

(2)

Ivor Gurney

A Time to Talk

73

(4)

Robert Frost

SOCIAL LIFE

The Mixer

77

(1)

Louis Macneice

Office Friendships

78

(1)

Gavin Ewart

Say about Seven

79

(2)

Ogden Nash

The Feckless Dinner-party

81

(3)

Walter De La Mare

Inviting a Friend to Supper

84

(2)

Ben Jonson

Ode to Ben Jonson

86

(1)

Robert Herrick

Of Friendship

87

(2)

Charles Stuart Calverley

Vers de Societe

89

(2)

Philip Larkin

Last Night

91

(1)

Martial

In the Garden

92

(2)

Walter De La Mare

Leaving

94

(5)

Richard Wilbur

DUMB FRIENDS

Frederick Kuh, Manx Cat

99

(1)

Robert Lowell

From Jubilate Agno

100

(2)

Christopher Smart

Last Words to a Dumb Friend

102

(3)

Thomas Hardy

Flush or Faunus

105

(1)

E. B. Browning

Bounce to Pope

106

(2)

A. D. Hope

Argus

108

(1)

Alexander Pope

The Pardon

109

(2)

Richard Wilbur

An Epitaph

111

(1)

William Watson

Epitaph of a Dog

111

(1)

Anon

My Pet Hare

112

(1)

William Cowper

From Philip Sparrow

113

(2)

John Skelton

Lux, My Fair Falcon

115

(1)

Thomas Wyatt

Partridge

116

(1)

Agathias

Good-night

117

(1)

Edward Thomas

A Dumb Friend

118

(2)

Christina Rossetti

From Desk

120

(2)

Marina Tsvetayeva

Tobacco Plant

122

(5)

Ivor Gurney

PORTRAITS

Way of Preface

127

(2)

Edward Lear

Friends

129

(2)

W. B. Yeats

A Letter from Brooklyn

131

(2)

Derek Walcott

Hearing that his Friend

133

(1)

Wang Chien

Townshend

134

(5)

Ivor Gurney

POETS TOGETHER

To a Friend

139

(1)

Oliver St John Gogarty

From An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

140

(2)

Alexander Pope

To E. T.

142

(1)

Robert Frost

To E. Fitzgerald

143

(2)

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Supper with Lindsay

145

(2)

Theodore Roethke

To Delmore Schwartz

147

(2)

Robert Lowell

The Sun Used to Shine

149

(2)

Edward Thomas

This Life on Earth

151

(1)

Kalidasa

To Mrs M. A. at Parting

152

(3)

Katherine Philips

For John Berryman

155

(4)

Robert Lowell

STRANGERS

The World State

159

(1)

G. K. Chesterton

The Stranger

160

(2)

R. M. Rilke

The Lonely Man

162

(2)

Randall Jarrell

These Strangers in a Foreign World

164

(1)

Emily Dickinson

Strange Meeting

165

(2)

Wilfred Owen

Karma

167

(1)

E. A. Robinson

Provide, Provide

168

(2)

Robert Frost

Best Society

170

(2)

Philip Larkin

The Guest

172

(1)

R. M. Rilke

To his Friend to Avoid Contention of Words

173

(1)

Robert Herrick

To a False Friend

174

(1)

Thomas Hood

A Light Woman

175

(3)

Robert Browning

West London

178

(1)

Matthew Arnold

In the Night

179

(4)

Stevie Smith

ABSENT FRIENDS

Friendship

183

(1)

Octavio Paz

The Mill

184

(2)

Richard Wilbur

To Mr I. L.

186

(1)

John Donne

Sea Canes

187

(1)

Derek Walcott

19 October

188

(7)

Alexander Pushkin

As Through the Wild Green Hills of Wyre

195

(2)

A. E. Housman

Mr Flood's Party

197

(3)

E. A. Robinson

The Unseen Playmate

200

(1)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Blue Hills over the North Wall

201

(1)

Li Po

Farewell

202

(2)

Ivor Gurney

Fletcher's Lament for His Friend

204

(1)

John Fletcher

To E. T.: 1917

205

(1)

Walter De La Mare

Felix Randal

206

(2)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lean Gaius

208

(1)

Lucilius

On the Death of Countess Luise Schwerin

209

(2)

R. M. Rilke

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham

211

(2)

John Dryden

York: In Memoriam W. H. Auden

213

(6)

Joseph Brodsky

LOOKING BACK

Tam Cari Capitis

219

(1)

Louis Macneice

Heraclitus

220

(1)

William Johnson Cory

If Anybody's Friend be Dead

221

(2)

Emily Dickinson

Two Friends

223

(1)

Norman Maccaig

To a Friend

224

(1)

Hartley Coleridge

From On the Death of Mr. William Hervey

225

(2)

Abraham Cowley

The Old Familiar Faces

227

(2)

Charles Lamb

Dreaming that I Went

229

(1)

Po Chu-I

The Meeting

230

(2)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Felix Antonius

232

(1)

Henry Newbolt

The Word

233

(1)

John Masefield

May and Death

234

(1)

Robert Browning

School and Schoolfellows

235

(4)

Winthrop Praed

Old Friends

239

(2)

John Betjeman

The Broken Friendship

241

(1)

Stevie Smith

If Memory Serves

242

(1)

Martial

Paying Calls

243

(1)

Thomas Hardy

The Chums

244

(1)

Theodore Roethke

To my Friends

245

(1)

Primo Levi

A Little Health

246

(1)

Anon

Acknowledgments

247

(4)

Index of First Lines

251

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials