We are Lonely for our Friends—²
The bird: a Nest—the spider:
A Web—Man: Friendship.³
We gain from heav’n—‘tis
All we Wish’d—a Friend!⁴
The name you are called by means Friend.⁵
True friends leave Footprints in your heart.⁶
Two names of friendship, but one Star, each
Stylèd by their end a copy of their friend—
Friendship indeed is written, not
In words, and with the Heart!⁷
We are Friends—in the Larger Sense …⁸
In a dream we see a new City of friends—
Nothing is greater there than the quality of Robust Love,
It Leads the rest: it is seen every hour in the actions of
The people of that city, in all their looks & words …⁹
We would rather walk with a Friend
In the Dark than alone in the light!¹⁰
¹ Walter Benjamin tr. Esther Leslie, Franz Hessel, Secret Berlin
² Naomi Shihab Nye, Moon Over Gaza
³ William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
⁴ Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard
⁵ Mitta tr. Charles Hallisey, Therīgāthā
⁶ Eleanor Roosevelt
⁷ Ben Jonson, A Part of an Ode
⁸ Primo Levi tr. Raymond Rosenthal, To My Friends
⁹ Walt Whitman, I Dream’d in a Dream
¹⁰ Helen Keller