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Dinah Maria Mulock - My Friend
Work rating: Low

MY Friend wears a cheerful smile of his own, 
And a musical tongue has he; 
We sit and look in each other`s face, 
And are very good company. 
A heart he has, full warm and red 
As ever a heart I see; 
And as long as I keep true to him, 
Why, he`ll keep true to me. 

When the wind blows high and the snow falls fast 
And we hear the wassailers` roar-- 
My Friend and I, with a right good-will 
We bolt the chamber door: 
I smile at him and he smiles at me 
In a dreamy calm profound, 
Till his heart leaps up in the midst of him 
With a comfortable sound. 

His warm breath kisses my thin gray hair 
And reddens my ashen cheeks; 
He knows me better than you all know, 
Though never a word he speaks:-- 
Knows me as well as some had known 
Were things--not as things be. 
But hey, what matters? my Friend and I 
Are capital company. 

At dead of night, when the house is still, 
He opens his pictures fair; 
Faces that are, that used to be, 
And faces that never were: 
My wife sits sewing beside my hearth, 
My little ones frolic wild, 
Though--Lilian`s married these twenty years, 
And I never had a child. 

But hey, what matters? When those who laugh 
May weep to-morrow, and they 
Who weep be as those that wept not--all 
Their tears long wiped away. 
I shall burn out, like you, my Friend, 
With a bright warm heart and bold, 
That flickers up to the last--then drops 
Into quiet ashes cold. 

And when you flicker on me, old Friend, 
In the old man`s elbow-chair, 
Or--something easier still, where we 
Lie down, to arise up fair 
And young, and happy--why then, my Friend, 
Should other friends ask of me, 
Tell them I lived and loved and died 
In the best of all company.
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