• Author: Markham, Edwin
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 11 21 1917
• Tags:
• poetry

FRIENDS WITH LIFE

Give me green rafters and the quiet hills, Where peace will mix a philter for my ills— Rafters of cedar and of sycamore, Where I can stretch out on the fragrant floor, And see them peer—the softly stepping shapes— By the still pool where hang the tart wild grapes. There on the hills of summer let me lie On the cool grass in friendship with the sky. Let me lie there in love with earth and sun, And wonder up at the lightfoot winds that run, Stirring the delicate edges of the trees, And shaking down a music of the seas. Bring some old book— “The Romance of the Rose,” A song through which the wine of morning blows. Let me stretch out at friends with life at last, Forgetting all the clamors of the past— The broken dream, the flying word unjust, The failure, and the friendship gone to dust.

— Edwin Markham.