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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537928" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Valediction</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Farewell, false hearts! whose best affections fail,<br>Like shallow brooks which summer suns exhale;<br>Forgetful of the man whom once ye chose,<br>Cold in his cause, and careless of his woes;<br>I bid you both a long and last adieu!<br>Cold in my turn, and unconcerned like you.<br>First, farewell Niger! whom, now duly proved,<br>I disregard as much as I have loved.<br>Your brain well furnished, and your tongue well taught<br>To press with energy your ardent thought,<br>Your senatorial dignity of face,<br>Sound sense, intrepid spirit, manly grace,<br>Have raised you high as talents can ascend, <br>Made you a peer, but spoilt you for a friend!<br>Pretend to all that parts have e'er acquired;<br>Be great, be feared, be envied, be admired;<br>To fame as lasting as the earth pretend,<br>But not hereafter to the name of friend!<br>I sent you verse, and, as your lordship knows,<br>Backed with a modest sheet of humble prose,<br>Not to recall a promise to your mind,<br>Fulfilled with ease had you been so inclined,<br>But to comply with feelings, and to give<br>Proof of an old affection still alive.<br>Your sullen silence serves at least to tell<br>Your altered heart; and so, my lord, farewell!<br>Next, busy actor on a meaner stage,<br>Amusement-monger of a trifling age,<br>Illustrious histrionic patentee,<br>Terentius, once my friend, farewell to thee!<br>In thee some virtuous qualities combine,<br>To fit thee for a nobler post than thine,<br>Who, born a gentleman, hast stooped too low,<br>To live by buskin, sock and raree-show.<br>Thy schoolfellow, and partner of thy plays,<br>When Nichol swung the birch and twined the bays,<br>And having known thee bearded and full grown,<br>The weekly censor of a laughing town,<br>I thought the volume I presumed to send,<br>Graced with the name of a long-absent friend,<br>Might prove a welcome gift, and touch thine heart,<br>Not hard by nature, in a feeling part.<br>But thou it seems, (what cannot grandeur do,<br>Though but a dream?) art grown disdainful too;<br>And strutting in thy school of queens and kings,<br>Who fret their hour and are forgotten things,<br>Hast caught the cold distemper of the day,<br>And, like his lordship, cast thy friend away.<br>O Friendship! cordial of the human breast!<br>So little felt, so fervently professed!<br>Thy blossoms deck our unsuspecting years;<br>The promise of delicious fruit appears;<br>We hug the hopes of constancy and truth,<br>Such is the folly of our dreaming youth;<br>But soon, alas! detect the rash mistake,<br>That sanguine inexperience loves to make;<br>And view with tears the expected harvest lost,<br>Decayed by time, or withered by a frost.<br>Whoever undertakes a friend's great part<br>Should be renewed in nature, pure in heart,<br>Prepared for martyrdom, and strong to prove<br>A thousand ways the force of genuine love.<br>He may be called to give up health and gain,<br>To exchange content for trouble, ease for pain.<br>To echo sigh for sigh, and groan for groan,<br>And wet his cheeks with sorrows not his own.<br>The heart of man, for such a task too frail, <br>When most relied on, is most sure to fail;<br>And, summoned to partake its fellow's woe,<br>Starts from its office, like a broken bow.<br>Votaries of business and of pleasure, prove<br>Faithless alike in friendship and in love.<br>Retired from all the circles of the gay,<br>And all the crowds that bustle life away,<br>To scenes where competition, envy, strife,<br>Beget no thunder-clouds to trouble life,<br>Let me, the charge of some good angel, find<br>One who has known and has escaped mankind;<br>Polite, yet virtuous, who has brought away<br>The manners, not the morals, of the day:<br>With him, perhaps with her, (for men have known<br>No firmer friendships than the fair have shown,)<br>Let me enjoy, in some unthought-of spot,<br>(All former friends forgiven, and forgot,)<br>Down to the close of life's fast fading scene,<br>Union of hearts, without a flaw between.<br>'Tis grace, 'tis bounty, and it calls for praise,<br>If God give health, that sunshine of our days;<br>And if he add, a blessing shared by few,<br>Content of heart, more praises still are due:--<br>But if he grant a friend, that boon possessed <br>Indeed is treasure, and crowns all the rest;<br>And giving one, whose heart is in the skies,<br>Born from above, and made divinely wise,<br>He gives, what bankrupt nature never can,<br>Whose noblest coin is light and brittle man,<br>Gold, purer far than Ophir ever knew,<br>A soul, an image of himself, and therefore true.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Cowper">William Cowper</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=537928" data-title="The Valediction de William Cowper" data-description="Farewell, false hearts! whose best affections fail,
Like shallow brooks which summer suns exhale;
Forgetful of the man whom once ye chose,
Cold in his cause, and careless of his woes;
I bid you both a long and last adieu!
Cold in my turn, and unco..."></div>
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