THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

 

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

The other day I had a call from a friend who is now more than 100 and a  few months old. He is  a retired army officer and also an Urdu poet of some merit and that is how he came into contact with us being a member of our circle of poets. It was long ago.  The circle is still  alive and meeting on a Sunday every month but the friend concerned has ceased to participate in its programmes.  His other- day call had a special purpose and that was he wanted to see the faces of old familiar poets  in the  type of those monthly meets in which he used to participate . I promised to fulfil his request as soon as possible and in the best possible manner.

                This incident which has deep sychological significance of human unions and separations, especially , during the periods of childhood and boyhood , reminded me of the best-known poem of the English poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834).

                Lamb was not a regular poet  He was a great essayist. He wrote only three or four poems, the one mentioned here is very famous among the young and the old.

                Here is the full text of the poem:

The Old Familiar Faces

I have had playmates. I have had companions

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

 

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,

Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

 

I loved a love once, fairest among women:

Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her ---

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

 

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;

Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;

Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

 

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,

Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

 

Friend of my bosom, though more than a brother,

Why wert not though born in my father’s dwelling

?

So might we talk of the old familiar faces.

 

How some they have died , and some they have left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

 

G.R.Kanwal                                                         *******

22^nd June 2023