Friendship

by Henry David Thoreau

‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers.’
Let such pure hate still underprop
Our love, that we may be
Each other’s conscience,
And have our sympathy
Mainly from thence.

We’ll one another treat like gods,
And all the faith we have
In virtue and in truth, bestow
On either, and suspicion leave
To gods below.

Two solitary stars—
Unmeasured systems far
Between us roll;
But by our conscious light we are
Determined to one pole.

What need confound the sphere?—
Love can afford to wait;
For it no hour’s too late
That witnesseth one duty’s end,
Or to another doth beginning lend.

It will subserve no use,
More than the tints of flowers;
Only the independent guest
Frequents its bowers,
Inherits its bequest.

No speech, though kind, has it;
But kinder silence doles
Unto its mates;
By night consoles,
By day congratulates.

What saith the tongue to tongue?
What heareth ear of ear?
By the decrees of fate
From year to year,
Does it communicate.

Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns;
No trivial bridge of words,
Or arch of boldest span,
Can leap the moat that girds
The sincere man.

No show of bolts and bars
Can keep the foeman out,
Or ’scape his secret mine,
Who entered with the doubt
That drew the line.

No warder at the gate
Can let the friendly in;
But, like the sun, o’er all
He will the castle win,
And shine along the wall.

There’s nothing in the world I know
That can escape from love,
For every depth it goes below,
And every height above.

It waits, as waits the sky
Until the clouds go by,
Yet shines serenely on
With an eternal day,
Alike when they are gone,
And when they stay.

Implacable is Love,—
Foes may be bought or teased
From their hostile intent,
But he goes unappeased

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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard University. He lived for two years, two months, and two days in a self-built cabin on Walden Pond, near Concord, and wrote his most famous work Walden during his time there. Thoreau was inspired by transcendentalism and emphasized the importance of nature and living simply. His writings on civil disobedience and protest against government policy would later influence many influential figures, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Although not initially popular, Thoreau’s works became influential and he is now regarded as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics. Thoreau’s friend Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of him “The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and a sort of eagle vision to survey the field … He was a protestant à l’outrance, and few lives contain so many renunciations.”