gh
thoughts, and pure desires, and ideals of service, they cannot remain
together except in form. Friends need not be identical in temperament
and capacity, but they must be alike in sympathy. An unequal yoke
becomes either an intolerable burden, or will drag one of the partners
away from the path his soul at its best would have loved to tread.

If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you.

If we choose our friends in Christ, neither here, nor ever, need we
fear parting, and will have the secure joy and peace which come from
having a friend who is as one's own soul.

The Eclipse of Friendship

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his pew.

* * * * * *

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead.
Sunk though he be beneath the watery flow.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.

MILTON.

The Eclipse of Friendship

As it is one of the greatest joys of life when a kindred soul is for
the first time recognized and claimed, so it is one of the bitterest
moments of life when the first rupture is made of the ties which bind
us to other lives. Before it comes, it is hard to believe that it is
possible, if we ever think of it at all. When it does come, it is
harder still to understand the meaning of the blow. The miracle of
friendship seemed too fair, to carry in its bosom the menace of its
loss. We knew, of course, that such things had been, and must be, but
we never quite realized what it would be to be the victims of the
common doom of man.

If it only came as a sudden pain, that passes after its brief spasm of
agony, it would not be so sore an affliction; but when it comes, it
comes to stay. There remains a place in our hearts which is tender to
every touch, and it is touched so often. We survive the shock of the
moment easier than the constant reminder of our loss. The old familiar
face, debarred to the sense of sight, can be recalled by a stray word,
a casual sight, a chance memory. The closer the intercourse had been,
the more things there are in our lives associated with him--things that