To A Friend Estranged From Me

Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sun

That will not rise again.

Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea,

Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charity

That lifts a man a little above the beasts that run.

That this could be!

That I should live to see

Most vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown,

So fitted out with purple robe and crown

To stand among his betters! Face to face

With outraged me in this once holy place,

Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and hunted

Truth was harboured out of danger,

He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger!

I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:

The hills may shift, the waters may decline,

Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,

But never your love from me, your hand from mine.

Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under.

Farewell, sweet light, great wonder!

You, too, farewell,-but fare not well enough to dream

You have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came.