There’s nothing quite like the bond between best friends, a connection that can withstand anything life throws our way.
To celebrate this, here are 10 poems that perfectly capture the essence of these unbreakable friendships.
If you’ve ever had a friend who felt more like family, these poems will resonate deeply and bring back heartwarming memories.
Let’s dive in!
My favorite poem about best friends
#1 “To A. E. P.” by Helen Jackson
We rode a day, from east, from west,
To meet. A year had done its best,
By absence, and by loss of speech,
To put beyond the other’s reach
Each heart and life ; but, drawing nigh,
“Ah! it is you!” “Yes, it is I!”
We said ; and love had been blasphemed
And slain in each had either deemed
Need of more words, or joy more plain
When eyes had looked in eyes again:
Ah friendship, stronger in thy might
Than time and space, as faith than sight!
Rich festival with thy red wine
My friend and I will keep in courts divine!
This poem is my favorite because it perfectly captures the magic of reuniting with a best friend after time apart.
The way it shows that no matter how much time or distance comes between us, our connection remains unbreakable is just beautiful.
It’s a heartfelt reminder that true friendship is like a celebration, and every reunion is one that carries joy and reminiscing good times.
9 more poems about best friends
#2 “A Deep-Sworn Vow” by W. B. Yeats
Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
#3 “We Have Been Friends Together” by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah (Sheridan) Norton
We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade,
Since first beneath the chestnut-tree
In infancy we played.
But coldness dwells within thy heart,
A cloud is on thy brow;
We have been friends together,
Shall a light word part us now?
We have been gay together;
We have laughed at little jests;
For the fount of hope was gushing
Warm and joyous in our breasts,
But laughter now hath fled thy lip,
And sullen glooms thy brow;
We have been gay together,
Shall a light word part us now?
We have been sad together;
We have wept with bitter tears
O’er the grass-grown graves where slumbered
The hopes of early years.
The voices which were silent then
Would bid thee cheer thy brow;
We have been sad together,
Shall a light word part us now?
#4 “After His Long Silence” by James Whitcomb Riley
Dear old friend of us all in need
Who know the worth of a friend indeed,
How rejoiced are we all to learn
Of your glad return.
We who have missed your voice so long—
Even as March might miss the song
Of the sugar-bird in the maples when
They’re tapped again.
Even as the memory of these
Blended sweets,—the sap of the trees
And the song of the birds, and the old camp too,
We think of you.
Hail to you, then, with welcomes deep
As grateful hearts may laugh or weep!—
You give us not only the bird that sings,
But all good things.
#5 “Sybil” by Julia Ward Howe
Your head is wild with books, Sybil,
But your heart is good and kind—
I feel a new contentment near you,
A pleasure of the mind.
Glad should I be to sit beside you,
And let long hours glide by,
Reading, through all your sweet narrations,
The language of your eye.
Since the maternal saint I worshipped
Did look and love her last,
No woman o’er my wayward spirit
Such gentle spell has cast.
Oh! tell me of your varied fortunes,
For you know not, from your face
Looks out strange sadness, lit with rapture,
And melancholy grace.
You are a gem, whose native brilliance
Could never wholly reign,
An opal, whose prismatic fire
A white cloud doth restrain.
And thus, the mood to which you move me
Is never perfect, quite,
‘Tis pity, wonderment, and pleasure,
Opacity and light.
Bear me then in your presence, Sybil,
And leave your hand in mine,
For, though human be my nature,
You’ve made it half divine.
#6 “A Friend or Two” by Wilbur D. Nesbit
There’s all of pleasure
and all of peace
In a friend or two;
And all your troubles may
find release
With a friend or two;
It’s in the grip of the clasping
hand
On native soil or in alien
land,
But the world is made do you understand?
Of a friend or two.
A song to sing
and a crust to share
With a friend or two;
A smile to give and a
grief to bear
With a friend or two;
A road to walk and a goal
to win,
An inglenook to find comfort
in,
The gladdest hours that
we know, begin
With a friend or two.
A little laughter; perhaps
some tears
With a friend or two;
The days, the weeks, and
the months and years
With a friend or two;
A vale to cross and a hill
to climb,
A mock at age and a jeer
at time
The prose of life takes the
lilt of rhyme
With a friend or two.
The brother-soul and
the brother-heart
Of a friend or two
Make us drift on from
the crowd apart,
With a friend or two;
For come days happy or
come days sad
We count no hours but
the ones made glad
By the hale good times
we have ever had
With a friend or two.
Then brim the goblet
and quaff the toast
To a friend or two ,
For glad the man who can
always boast
Of a friend or two;
The fairest sight is a
friendly face,
The blithest tread is a
friendly pace,
And heaven will be a better
place
For a friend or two.
#7 “The Lover Pleads with His Friend for Old Friends” by W. B. Yeats
Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.
#8 From “Mary” by Harriet Downing
As tender mothers, and as friends sincere,
Wiping from Sorrow’s eye its bitterest tear;
Soothing with gentle hand both pain and grief,
Giving fresh zest to joy, to woe relief;
Seeking life’s stormy billows to assuage,
Forming the manners of the future age;
Planting the seeds of principle and truth,
Of honour, and of virtue, in our youth;
Acting in secret like the human heart,
The vital spring of each component part.—
Should circumstance draw forth those latent pow’rs
That lay conceal’d in life’s more tranquil hours,
Elicit from their minds those brilliant rays
Which, when once kindled, like a comet blaze, —
The world in wonder hails their hallow’d name,
And spreads it with the trumpet-mouth of fame;
Unmindful of the thousands now on earth,
Equal to them in pure heroic worth,
Who want but chance some proving hour to send,
To make them shine as patriot, or as FRIEND;
Who, like fair La Vallette, would risk their lives,
And stand the test, as truest, tenderest wives.
#9 “Comrades Four” by Claude McKay
Dear comrades, my comrades,
My heart is always true;
An’ ever an’ ever
I shall remember you.
We all joined together,
Together joined we four;
An’ I have been first to
Pass t’rough the open door.
We four drilled together,
Together drilled we all;
An’ I’ve been the first to
Flee from the life o’ gall.
We parted, dear comrades,
We parted all in tears,
An’ each went his own way
To shoulder life’s sad cares.
O comrades, my comrades,
What is de lasting gain,
But all t’rough de tempest
A heart of unmixed pain?
My comrades, loved comrades,
I hear your bitter cry;
But life’s pain will end, boys,
Will end yet—by an’ by.
#10 “To a Friend” by Dora Greenwell
Oh, call me but thy Friend!
Seek thou no other word when thou wouldst pour
Thy soul in mine; for this unto the core
Of Love doth pierce, and in it comprehend
All secrets of its lore!
Yet thou dost move within
A Tropic sphere of soul, and all too weak
For thy full- hearted utterance; worn too thin
By daily usage seem the words we speak,
Too oft misprizing them; so thou dost hold
This current coin of ours for base, and choose
From thine own wealth new moulds, wherein to fuse
Thy virgin, unsunned gold!
So let thy choice be free!
Our spirits thus by divers laws are bound ;
One may not judge the other, but from me
Seek thou no other token for its sound
Hath been to me for music; bringing round
Kind eyes that looked on me, kind hands I found
Outstretched to help me over pathways drear;
And some of these are far, and some are near,
And some are in the Heavens, but all are dear
In God, who gave them to me; so this ” Friend”
Is like a full- stringed chord, that still doth seem
Within its sound to gather up and blend
All, all that life in other lives that takes
Away Life’s curse of barrenness, and makes
Our Being’s sweet and often-troubled dream!
I never used it lightly; unto me
A sacredness hung round it; for a Sign
I held it of our common words that be
Initial letters of a speech divine:
Oh, take this coin, too oft to worthless ends
Profaned, and see upon its circlet shine
One Image fair–one Legend never dim;
And Whose but Cæsar’s ? for this word by Him
Was used at parting, “I have called you Friends.”