Friends by Olive Tilford Dargan — Read

There's one comes often as the sun / And fills my room with morning; comes with step / Light as a youth's that joy has hurried home. / If he should greet my cheek, so might a wind / Blow roses till they touch, silk leaf to leaf, / And on their beauty leave no deeper dye; / But with that touch an old world is untombed, / Gay, festal-gowned; and two with nuptial eyes / Walk arm-locked there, flinging the curls of Greece / From proud, smooth brows. As trapped between two throbs, / Their laughter dies in silent passion's kiss; / And I from glow of ancient dust look up / To meet the untroubled eyes of my friend's bride, / Her pretty, depthless eyes that smile and smile / Possessingly, not grudging alien me / A footstool place about her sceptred love. / And I, too, from imperial largess, smile.

Another comes more rarely than new moon, / And always with a flower, -- one; pours tea / Like an old picture softly made alive, / Sings me a ballad that once teased the ears / Of golden Bess, and reads the book I love. / If he must journey, first he comes to lay / Knight-service on my hand; no passion then / More swift than when a last cool petal falls / To faded summer grass; but as he goes / I see a girl deep in a forest lane, / A narrow lane dark-roofed with locking firs; / And there are purple foxgloves shoulder high, / And round the girl's knees Canterbury bells. / Upon the air is scent of wounded trees, / As though a storm had passed there, and great owls / Ruffle a shade unloved of birds that sing. / But at the green lane's end, far down / A bit of heart-shaped sun tells where the road / Lies wide and open; on the sun the still / Dark shadow of a steed: and by the girl / One who shall ride, -- unvisored now, and pale. / "And when I come," he says, to me who know / He'll come that way no more; then hear my door / Closed softly on a sob ten centuries old.