A Lost Friend.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1899, 6 September 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Lost Friend.

M? friend lie was ; my friend from all the rest ; With childlike faith he oped to me his breast ; No door was looked on altar, grave of grief ; No weakness veiled, concealed no disbelief ; The hope, the sorrow, and the wrong were bare, And ah, the shadow only showed the fair. I gave him love for lpve, bat deep within I magnified each frailty into sin ; Each mll'topped foible in the sunset glowed, Obscnring vales where the rirered virtues flowed. Boproof became reproach, till common grew The captious word at every fault I knew. He smiled upon the censorship, and boro With patient love the tonch that wounded sore ; Until at length, so had my blindness grown, He knew I judged him by his faults alone. Alone, of all men, I who knew him beat, Eefused the gold, to take the drosa for test ; Gold strangers honored for the. worth they saw, His friend forgot the diamond in the flaw. At last it oame— the day he stood apart, When from my eyea he proudly veiled his heart, When carping judgment and uncertain word A stern resentment in his bosom stirred ; When in his face I read what I had been, And with his vision saw what he had seen. Too late ! too late ! 0, oould he then have known, When his love died, that min9 had perfect grown ; That when the veil was drawn, abased, chastised The censor stood, the lost one truly prized. Too late we learn— a man mußt hold his friend Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end. — John Boylo O'Beilly, in Boston Pilot.