The stalk
of the lotus may be broken, and the fibres remain connected."
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill
without. There may be courtesy, there may be even temper, and
wit, and talent, and sparkling conversation, there may be
good-will even, - and yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine
for exercise. Our life without love is like coke and ashes. Men
may be pure as alabaster and Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan
villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet if there is no milk mingled
with the wine at their entertainments, better is the hospitality
of Goths and Vandals.
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh
of my flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his
nature groping yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart.
Have not the fates associated us in many ways? It says, in the
Vishnu Purana: "Seven paces together is sufficient for the
friendship of the virtuous, but thou and I have dwelt together."
Is it of no significance that we have so long partaken of the
same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the same air
summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same
fruits have been pleased to refresh us both, and we have never
had a thought of different fibre the one from the other!
Nature doth have her dawn each day,
But mine are far between;
Content, I cry, for sooth to say,
Mine brightest are I ween.
For when my sun doth deign to rise,
Though it be her noontide,
Her fairest field in shadow lies,
Nor can my light abide.
Sometimes I bask me in her day,
Conversing with my mate,
But if we interchange one ray,
Forthwith her heats abate.
Through his discourse I climb and see,
As from some eastern hill,
A brighter morrow rise to me
Than lieth in her skill.
As 't were two summer days in one,
Two Sundays come together,
Our rays united make one sun,
With fairest summer weather.
As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me
to the ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of
youth; as surely as the last strain of music which falls on my
decaying ear shall make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the
manifold influences of nature survive during the term of our
natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, and
reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall foster and adorn and
consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins of temples. As
I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and
flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I
love thee, my Friend.
