Of Friend-Ships - 3rd Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge

This is my second post in Bill West’s Third Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge. The challenge is to:

Find a poem by a local poet, famous or obscure, from the region one of your ancestors lived in. It can be about an historical event, a legend, a person, or even about some place (like a river)or a local animal. It can even be a poem you or one of your ancestors have written! Or if you prefer, post the lyrics of a song or a link to a video of someone performing the song.

In my grandmother’s scrapbook, I found several poems written by her brother, Walter Ivan Martindale (1883-1958). I don’t know whether Walter wrote poetry throughout his life or only in his later years. 

Of Friend-Ships

While living in the gloaming, near the ending of lifes way,
And in memory I’m roaming through the scenes of yesterday,
As I count my many blessings and treasures that I own,
I find among the sweetest, are the friend-ships I have known.

For all along my journey, through each hour, and every day,
Their friendly smiles and hand-clasp has brightened up the way,
They my follies and my failures have seen and understood,
I could not live without them and would not if I could.

If we never met with sorrows, or temptations on our way,
We might never know the comfort friend-ship brings to us each day,
And if we but live in friend-ship and each fellow of us can,
Then the world would be united in the brotherhood of man.

For friend-ship has this virtue, that it knows not sect or creed,

The parish priest, the minister and folk of lesser breed,
The white, the red, the black man, of every land or clime,
Can enjoy each other’s friend-ship as they serve their day and time.

For friend-ships high and holy, for friend-ships kind and true,
Of high estate and lowly, I am humbly grateful too,
And when my days are over and my earthly journey ends
I shall thank our heavenly Father that I’ve had such lovely friends.

I previously featured one of Walter I. Martindale’s poems in the post Love Stories – Our Golden Wedding Day.


© 2011 Denise Spurlock