Alas,--and bitter is their loss, the parents, and the children, Who, loving up and down the world, have missed each other's friendship. Haply, it had grown of careless life, for years go swiftly by; Or sprang of too much carefulness, that drank up all the streams: Haply, sullen disappointment came and quenched the fire; Haply, sternness, or misrule, crushed or warped the feelings. Then, ill-combined in tempers, they learnt not each the other; The growing child grew out of love, and drew the breath of fear; The youth, ill-trained, renounced his fears, and made a league with cunning; And so those hardened men were foes, that should have been chief friends. Where was the cause, the mutual cause? O hunt it out to kill it: And what the cure, the simple cure?--A mutual flash of love. For dull estrangement's daily air froze up those early sympathies By cold continuance in apathy, or cutting winds of censure; It was a slow process, which any fleeting hour could have melted; But every hour duly came, and passed without the sun. Caution, care, and dry distrust, obscured each other's minds, Till both those gardens, rich to yield, were rank with many weeds: And doubt, a hidden worm, gnawed at the root of their Society, They lacked of mutual confidence, and lived in mutual dread. Judge me, many fathers; and hearken to my counsel, many sons; I come with good in either hand, to reconcile contentions; For better friends can no man have, than those whom God hath given, And he that hath despised the gift, thought ill of that he knew not. Be ye wiser,--(I speak unto the sons,)--and win paternal friendships, Cultivate their kindness, seek them out with honour, and be the screening Japhet to their failings: And be ye wiser,--(I speak unto the fathers)--gain those filial comrades, Cherish their reasonable converse, and look not with coldness on your children. For the friendship of a child is the brightest gem set upon the circlet of Society, A jewel worth a world of pains--a jewel seldom seen.