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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416874" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Three Dead Friends</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Always suddenly they are gone--<br>The friends we trusted and held secure--<br>Suddenly we are gazing on,<br>Not a _smiling_ face, but the marble-pure<br>Dead mask of a face that nevermore<br>To a smile of ours will make reply--<br>The lips close-locked as the eyelids are--<br>Gone--swift as the flash of the molten ore<br>A meteor pours through a midnight sky,<br>Leaving it blind of a single star.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tell us, O Death, Remorseless Might!<br>What is this old, unescapable ire<br>You wreak on us?--from the birth of light<br>Till the world be charred to a core of fire!<br>We do no evil thing to you--<br>We seek to evade you--that is all--<br>That is your will--you will not be known<br>Of men. What, then, would you have us do?--<br>Cringe, and wait till your vengeance fall,<br>And your graves be fed, and the trumpet blown?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You desire no friends; but _we_--O we<br>Need them so, as we falter here,<br>Fumbling through each new vacancy,<br>As each is stricken that we hold dear.<br>One you struck but a year ago;<br>And one not a month ago; and one--<br>(God's vast pity!)--and one lies now<br>Where the widow wails, in her nameless woe,<br>And the soldiers pace, with the sword and gun,<br>Where the comrade sleeps, with the laureled brow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what did the first?--that wayward soul,<br>Clothed of sorrow, yet nude of sin,<br>And with all hearts bowed in the strange control<br>Of the heavenly voice of his violin.<br>Why, it was music the way he _stood_,<br>So grand was the poise of the head and so<br>Full was the figure of majesty!--<br>One heard with the eyes, as a deaf man would,<br>And with all sense brimmed to the overflow<br>With tears of anguish and ecstasy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what did the girl, with the great warm light<br>Of genius sunning her eyes of blue,<br>With her heart so pure, and her soul so white--<br>What, O Death, did she do to you?<br>Through field and wood as a child she strayed,<br>As Nature, the dear sweet mother led;<br>While from her canvas, mirrored back,<br>Glimmered the stream through the everglade<br>Where the grapevine trailed from the trees to wed<br>Its likeness of emerald, blue and black.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what did he, who, the last of these,<br>Faced you, with never a fear, O Death?<br>Did you hate _him_ that he loved the breeze,<br>And the morning dews, and the rose's breath?<br>Did you hate him that he answered not<br>Your hate again--but turned, instead,<br>His only hate on his country's wrongs?<br>Well--you possess him, dead!--but what<br>Of the good he wrought? With laureled head<br>He bides with us in his deeds and songs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Laureled, first, that he bravely fought,<br>And forged a way to our flag's release;<br>Laureled, next--for the harp he taught<br>To wake glad songs in the days of peace--<br>Songs of the woodland haunts he held<br>As close in his love as they held their bloom<br>In their inmost bosoms of leaf and vine--<br>Songs that echoed, and pulsed and welled<br>Through the town's pent streets, and the sick child's room,<br>Pure as a shower in soft sunshine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Claim them, Death; yet their fame endures,<br>What friend next will you rend from us<br>In that cold, pitiless way of yours,<br>And leave us a grief more dolorous?<br>Speak to us!--tell us, O Dreadful Power!--<br>Are we to have not a lone friend left?--<br>Since, frozen, sodden, or green the sod,--<br>In every second of every hour,<br>_Some one_, Death, you have left thus bereft,<br>Half inaudibly shrieks to God.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Whitcomb+Riley">James Whitcomb Riley</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416874" data-title="Three Dead Friends de James Whitcomb Riley" data-description="Always suddenly they are gone--
The friends we trusted and held secure--
Suddenly we are gazing on,
Not a _smiling_ face, but the marble-pure
Dead mask of a face that nevermore
To a smile of ours will make reply--
The lips close-locked as the eyel..."></div>
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