Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship

Friendship - meaning Summary

Friendship as Moral Anchor

Emerson's "Friendship" presents a speaker who finds stability and moral renewal in a steadfast friend. Amid a shifting, uncertain world the friend's constancy restores hope, reshapes perception, and ennobles ordinary life. The poem celebrates how close companionship relieves despair, teaches nobility, and revitalizes the speaker's inner sources of feeling, turning fate's routine into something luminous and meaningful.

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A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled,-- And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness, Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness had taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

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