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Crosse, Andrew – Poems – Friendship
Identifier
026652
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
FRIENDSHIP
“AH! 't is not the time when your friend is in trouble,
Though fragile and faulty that friend has been found;
Ah! 't is not the time to prove friendship a bubble,
And with the base herd tread him down to the ground!
"If his fate has been just, is it well to upbraid him,
And then to the Great One for pardon to kneel?
To expect that the God whom he calls on to aid him,
To thee will be tender, to him will be steel?
"If his fate has been hard, is it right to deny him
The kindness you once in prosperity shared?
Or, that which a savage would shrink from, to fly him,
As if at his presence polluted or scared?
"Yet such is the world-all religious and saintly
When religion's the passage to tinsel and pride,
But retailers of doctrines which sound somewhat quaintly
When the word by the deed is expressly belied!"