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Lettered inside image: "37 | Is virtue kindling at a rival fire, | And, emulously rapid in her race. | O the soft enmity! endearing strife! | This carries friendship to her noon-tide point, | And gives the rivet of eternity. | From friendship, which outlives my former themes, | Glorious survivor of old time, and death! | From friendship thus, that flower of heavenly seed, | The wise extract earth's most hyblean bliss, | Superior wisdom crown'd with smiling joy. | But for whom blossoms this elysian flower? | Abroad they find, who cherish it at home. | LORENZO! pardon what my love extorts, | An honest love, and not afraid to frown. | Though choice of follies fasten on the great, | None clings more obstinate than fancy fond | That sacred friendship is their easy prey; | Caught by the wafture of a golden lure, | Or fascination of a high-born smile. | Their smiles, the great, and the coquet throw out | For other hearts, tenacious of their own; | And we no less of ours, when such the bait. | Ye fortune's cofferers! ye powers of wealth! | You do your rent-rolls most felonious wrong, | By taking our attachment to yourselves: | Can gold gain friendship? impudence of hope! | As well mere man an angel might beget: | *Love, and love only, is the loan for love. | LORENZO! pride repress; nor hope to find | A friend, but what has found a friend in thee."; lower right: "inv. & sc | WB"; Lettered on facing page: "36 | Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines, | And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive, | What is she but the means of happiness? | That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool; | A melancholy fool, without her bells. | Friendship, the means of wisdom, richly gives | The precious end, which makes our wisdom wise. | Nature, in zeal for human amity, | Denies, or damps an undivided joy: | Joy is an import--joy is an exchange-- | Joy flies monopolists; it calls for two: | Rich fruit! heaven-planted! never pluck'd by one. | Needful auxiliars are our friends, to give | To social man true relish of himself. | Full on ourselves descending in a line, | Pleasure's bright beam in feeble in delight: | Delight intense is taken by rebound; | Reverberated pleasures fire the breast. | Celestial happiness, whene'er she stoops | To visit earth, one shrine the goddess finds, | And one alone, to make her sweet amends | For absent heaven--the bosom of a friend; | Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft, | Each other's pillow to repose divine. | Beware the counterfeit: in passion's flame | Hearts melt; but melt like ice, soon harder froze: | True love strikes root in reason, passion's foe: | Virtue alone entenders us for life-- | I wrong her much--entenders us for ever: | Of friendship's fairest fruits, the fruit most fair"