17 pages • 34 minutes read
We Have Been Friends Together
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Symbols & Motifs
Chestnut-Tree
The most common type of chestnut tree in England is the sweet chestnut tree, from which edible nuts are harvested for roasting. These trees can grow to a massive size and have twisting trunks and wide, low branches. The friends in “We Have Been Friends Together” play under these trees when they are children. The trees have deep root systems and can live for hundreds of years, so they have become symbolic of longevity. Longevity is one of the reasons the speaker gives the friend for retaining their friendship. Chestnut trunks often develop vertical fissures, and their branches can collapse, but those branches may grow new shoots where they land. As with the branches, Norton implies something new could come out of this emotional fissure the friends are experiencing.
“Fount of Hope Was Gushing”
In Stanza Two, the friends are “gay together” (Line 9, Line 15) and deeply happy. This is due to the “hope” (Line 11) flowing between them. The image here is of a fountain bubbling over with rushing water. The speaker correlates a physical fountain to the emotional “hope” (Line 11) overflowing in their hearts. This is a “warm and joyous” (Line 12) experience. What this seems to reveal is the friends share aspirations together. Perhaps this “hope” (Line 11) is only for a deepening friendship. It could be for a more intimate connection, which seems possible at an earlier point in the relationship. That this “hope” (Line 11) stops flowing is evidence in Stanza Three when we see the “hopes of early years” (Line 20) buried. Things no longer “gush” (Line 11) as they used to. The fountain has stopped bubbling.
“Voices Silent There”
That the “early hopes” (Line 20) remain as ghosts in the lives of the friends is made clear by the speaker comparing them to the dead. These dead feelings are deliberately resurrected by the speaker to convince the friend that there is something left to salvage. The speaker is suggesting the friends’ shared memories of “early hopes” (Line 20)—these apparitions of aspirations shared—should convince the friend to forgive the perceived slight. “The voices silent” (Line 21) in the “grass-grown graves” (Line 19) have “slumber’d” (Line 19), but the speaker now suggests if they could rise and speak, they would urge the friend to “clear” their forehead of hurt. In other words, the speaker suggests the friends were happy once, and after recalling how deeply they felt at that time, the friend should not want to “part” (Line 24). The speaker is asking their friend to reach back beyond the moment of hurt and to allow the ghostly presence of past desires dictate the future.
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