Haven't Talked To A Friend In A While? Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Haven't Talked To A Friend In A While?
Current mood: disappointed
Category: Writing and Poetry
Around The Corner
Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949)

Around the corner I have a friend
In this great city that has no end;
Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone,
And I never see my old friends face,
For life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell
And he rang mine.
We were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men;
Tired with trying to make a name
Tired with playing a foolish game,
Tomorrow, I say, I will call on Jim,
Just to show that Im thinking of him.
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And the distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner! yet miles away ...
Heres a telegram, sir.
Jim died today.
And thats what we get and deserve in the end
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

The Saturday Evening Post [v189 #33, February 10, 1917]
Selected poems of Charles Hanson Towne, New York, London, D. Appleton and company, 1925.