The Comfort Of Friends

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.
Death cannot kill what never dies.
Nor can spirits ever be divided
that love and live in the same divine principle;
the root and record of their friendship.

If absence be not death, neither is theirs.
Death is but crossing the world,
as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
For they must needs be present,
that love and live in that which is Omni-present.

In this divine glass they see face to face;
and their converse is free as well as pure.
This is the comfort of friends,
that though they may be said to die,
yet their friendship and society are,
in the best sense, ever present,
because immortal.

By William Penn

Human life cycle

William Penn (October 14, 1644 – July 30, 1718) was an English colonial proprietor and the son of the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. Penn was a writer, early Quaker, and founder of the English North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans. Under his direction, the city of Philadelphia was planned and developed.