| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 20 |
Page 4 |
But even these tender and holy friendships we cannot keep forever; one by one they fall off or are torn out of our lives. There are many ways of losing friends. Sometimes, without explanation, without offence or a shadow of a reason which we know, without hint or warning given, our friend suddenly withdraws from us and goes his own way, and through life we never have hint or token of the old friendship.
“Oh, what was the hour and the day,
The moment, I lost you?
I thought you were walking my way;
I turned to accost you,
And silence and emptiness met
My word half unspoken.”
Some friends are lost to us, not by any sudden rupture, but by a slow and gradual falling apart which goes on imperceptibly through long periods, tie after tie unclasping until all are loosed, when hearts once knit together in holy union find themselves hopelessly estranged. A little bird dropped a seed on a rock. The seed fell into a crevice and grew, and at length the great rock was rent asunder by the root of the tree that sprang up. So little seeds of alienation sometimes fall between two friends and in the end produce a separation which rends their friendship and sunders them for ever.
“No sudden treason turns
The long accustomed loyalty to hate,
But years bring weariness for sweet content;
And fondness, daily sustenance of love,
Which use should make a tribute easier paid,
First grudged, and then withheld, the heart if starved;
And though compassion or remorseful thought
Of happy days departed bring again
The ancient tenderness in seeming flood,
Not less it ebbs and ebbs till all is bare.”
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