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Friendship

Friendship needs no studied phrases,
Polished face, or winning wiles;
Friendship deals no lavish praises,
Friendship dons no surface smiles.
Friendship follows nature’s diction,
Shuns the blandishments of art,
Boldly severs truth from fiction,
Speaks the language of the heart.
Friendship favors no condition,
Scorns a narrow-minded creed,
Lovingly fulfills its mission,
Be it word or be it deed.
Friendship cheers the faint and weary,
Makes the timid spirit brave,
Warns the erring, lights the dreary,
Smooths the passage to the grave.
Friendship-pure, unselfish friendship,
All through life’s allotted span,
Nurtures, strengthens, widens, lengthens,
Man’s relationship with man.

by Anonymous Americas

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The Lockless Door

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a “Come in”
To whoever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

ROBERT FROST

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Epitaph On A Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
W.H. Auden

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Let History Be My Judge

We made all possible preparations,
Drew up a list of firms,
Constantly revised our calculations
And allotted the farms,
Issued all the orders expedient
In this kind of case:
Most, as was expected, were obedient,
Though there were murmurs, of course;
Chiefly against our exercising
Our old right to abuse:
Even some sort of attempt at rising,
But these were mere boys.
For never serious misgiving
Occurred to anyone,
Since there could be no question of living
If we did not win.
The generally accepted view teaches
That there was no excuse,
Though in the light of recent researches
Many would find the cause
In a not uncommon form of terror;
Others, still more astute,
Point to possibilities of error
At the very start.
As for ourselves there is left remaining
Our honor at least,
And a reasonable chance of retaining
Our faculties to the last.
W.H. Auden

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Being Alive

The only reason for living is being fully alive;

and you can’t be fully alive if you are crushed by secret fear,

and bullied with the threat: Get money, or eat dirt! —

and forced to do a thousand mean things meaner than your nature,

and forced to clutch on to possessions in the hope they’ll make you feel safe,

and forced to watch everyone that comes near you, lest they’ve come to do you down.

Without a bit of common trust in one another, we can’t live.

In the end, we go insane.

It is the penalty of fear and meanness, being meaner than our natures are.

To be alive, you’ve got to feel a generous flow,

and under a competitive system that is impossible, really.

The world is waiting for a new great movement of generosity,

or for a great wave of death.

We must change the system, and make living free to all men,

or we must see men die, and the die ourselves.

D. H. LAWRENCE

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