Farewell Address

“ The sigh is faithful, and the grief sincere.
Should utterance tremble, should the tear-drop start,
They will but echo and o'erflow the heart.
Three years, my friends---how brief they seem!---have fled
Since on your shore 'twas my good hap to tread ”

“ When the lash of the driver is sounding,
'Way down—way down upon old Georgia's shore,
I will trust in my Saviour,
His grace I will implore—
Farewell—we'll meet on earth no more.
Fare-you-well, my dear mother,
I leave you now behind;
Farewell; we'll meet on earth no more. ”

“ Then I wrote a few cordial lines to my friend the pastor. As I added the farewell message to his dear daughters, the sorrowful face of the eldest again appeared before me in the most vivid hues, and her earnest eyes seemed to say: "You do not know what happiness you are losing." ”

“ Prior to his death he wrote his "farewell to the world," which he requested should be read as a part of his funeral service, which was done. The farewell is almost as long as a sermon and is "the very perfume of piety and Christian assurance." ”

“ Adieu, adieu, adieu, farewell, farewell, farewell, my dearest brother in the Lord, till we meet again. Though we must part here, and be separated by men, I hope that we shall meet again where men can part us no more. ”

“ When the last farewell is spoken, and the last hand clasped on earth, there will come the meeting with a new and glorious company, and the touch of those dear Hands once wounded for our transgressions. ”

“ The kiss, the handkerchief, the siren and the bell,
A smile or two, and then the loneliness.
Farewell. And if we never speak again,
Let there remain a little souvenir,
Airy as a handkerchief, simpler than a card,
Deceptive, like the scent of gilt veneer.
And if I saw what others have not seen,
So much the better, swallow, homeward on the wing:
You showed me South, where hidden lies your nest;
Your fate it is to fly, my fate to sing.
Farewell. And if this was indeed the end,
So much the worse for hope whose life is gone;
For if we wish to meet, then never part. ”

“ The honest words, "Good-bye!"
"Adieu! adieu!" may greet the ear,
In the guise of courtly speech: But when we leave the kind and dear,
'Tis not what the soul would teach. Whene'er we grasp the hands of those
We would have forever nigh, The flame of Friendship bursts and glows
In the warm, frank words, "Good-bye."
The mother, sending forth her child
To meet with cares and strife, Breathes through her tears her doubts and fears
For the loved one's future life. No cold "adieu," no "farewell," lives
Within her choking sigh, But the deepest sob of anguish gives,
"God bless thee, boy! ”

“ If I am parted dear from thee.
Farewell! Farewell! I give thee up.
[Pg 50] The dregs of life I now must sup.
But loving thee, I can forgive.
Without thy love, I cannot live.
Alone, forsaken, and bereft,
There’s naught on earth for me now left.
Farewell! farewell! our past is dead,
All happiness from me hath fled.
The dreary future must be met;
I find that I can not forget.
I think that thou wilt love me dear,
When I am dead, and o’er my bier
Thou bendest down to look at me.
My heart will then from grief be free.
[Pg 51]
FAREWELL.
My lover of the past, farewell! ”

“ If we are never to meet again, let us hope for a reunion in a better world.
Farewell, best beloved, you who know that our parting is harder to bear than death. It may be that we shall never meet again. Yet every day, when night falls, let us renew our hopes. ”

“ Sir, this paper is to bid you a hearty farewell for ever—and to bring my humble thanks for all your noble favours; and I hope that you will believe a dying man. I have as much love as honour for you; and I will bend my feeble knees to the God of Heaven that you, my dear lady and your children, and their children, may be blest with external and eternal happiness; and that the same blessing may fall upon my lady Sunderland and her relations. ”

“ Where dream like time pass'd by,
I bid farewell to each, to all—
But bid it not to thee—
Oh! surely even in the tomb
Some sign of love may be.
When thou art mourning o'er my grave,
My spirit may be near ”

“ And where never a snowdrop blooms,
Nor wild becks talk as they go
Of tender hope we had known,
Nor mosses of memory grow
All over the wayside stone.
III. Farewell, farewell, and farewell,
As voice of a lover's sigh
In the wind let yon willow wave
'Farewell, farewell, and farewell.'
The sparkling frost-stars brave
On thy shrouded bosom lie;
Thou art gone apart to dwell,
But I fain would have said good-bye.
For love of thee in thy grave
I have lived a better man,
O my Mary Anne,
My Mary Anne.
Mrs. Thorpe (aside) . O hearts! why, what a song! ”

“ But dreams must fade ofttimes before the dawn, and erelong they must say farewell, those foolish young lovers, who found the world so entirely made for them alone. And yet not farewell, but au revoir—au revoir until the morrow, with, perchance, Father Ambrose's approval, if not his blessing, on their flight from troubles and shadows, suspicions and jealousies. ”

“ Farewell! Farewell! the voice you hear Has left its last soft tone with you; Its next must join the seaward cheer, And shout among the shouting crew.
The accents which I scarce could form Beneath your frown's controlling check, Must give the word, above the storm, To cut the mast and clear the wreck.
The timid eye I dared not raise, The hand that shook when pressed to thine, Must point the guns upon the chase, Must bid the deadly cutlass shine.
To all I love, or hope, or fear, Honour or own, a long adieu! To all that life has soft and dear, Farewell! save memory of you! ”

“ And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man, and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar’s library, in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening.
But now, farewell—a long farewell—to happiness, winter or summer! Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep. ”

“ Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. ”

“ The expansion of trade hasn't fully closed the gap between those of us who live on the cutting edge of the global economy and the billions around the world who live on the knife's edge of survival. This global gap requires more than compassion; it requires action. Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference. In his first Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson warned of entangling alliances. But in our times, America cannot and must not disentangle itself from the world. If we want the world to embody our shared values, then we must assume a shared responsibility. ”

“ Yonder? Yes! Here? Yes! The salutary influence for good by the consistent life of our elder can never be lost or forgotten.
We lay our brother's body to-day in Cypress Hills Cemetery, but his spirit hovers o'er us.
This tenement of dust is empty, but Jesus says: "I am the resurrection and the life."
We have deep feelings to-day, for we realize that we have lost a friend. No more. "God bless you, my brother, in your work." No more shall we see you at the prayer-meeting. Farewell, dear elder and co-worker. We say farewell but not forever. "We shall meet beyond the river." ”

“ It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution, in those intrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. ”

“ To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way, which the constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield. ”

“ The light'ning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the Heart that lives alone,
Hous'd in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient chear,
And frequent sights of what is to be born!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. ”

“ From the opportunities which fate and my fellow citizens have given me, as a Member of the House, as Vice President and President of the Senate, and as President of all the people, I have come to understand and place the highest value on the checks and balances which our founders imposed on government through the separation of powers among co-equal legislative, executive, and judicial branches. ”

“ Farewell, Miriam! my heart is with thee by thy fountain’s side. Fatal blast, bear her my dying words, my blessing. And ye too, friends, whose too neglected love I think of now, farewell! Farewell, my uncle; farewell, pleasant home, and Hamadan’s serene and shadowy bowers! Farewell, Jabaster, and the mighty lore of which thou wert the priest and I the pupil! Thy talisman throbs on my faithful heart. Green earth and golden sun, and all the beautiful and glorious sights ye fondly lavish on unthinking man, farewell, farewell! I die in the desert: ‘tis bitter. ”

“ As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war—as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years—I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight. ”

“ We are about to separate—many of us never to meet again on earth, and I bid you an affectionate adieu, with the fervent prayer that you may long enjoy the confidence and respect of your constituents, and that happiness and prosperity may attend you all through life. ”

“ They will be among the last to bid you an affectionate adieu when the farewell time draws near, the time when you bid good-bye—at least for a few ages—to the universe of your origin, when you enseraphim for transit to the receiving worlds of the minor sector of the superuniverse. ”

“ There is no welcome unaccompanied by the shadow of farewell. There is no leaping of the heart to meet sunshine and fair weather without its corresponding faintness of shrinking from the clouds and darkness certain to follow. ”

“ The rapid depletion of irreplaceable minerals, the erosion of topsoil, the destruction of beauty, the blight of pollution, the demands of increasing billions of people, all combine to create problems which are easy to observe and predict but difficult to resolve. If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now. ”

“ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ In my ‘Farewell and Return’ I suppose a young man to take leave of his native place, and to exchange farewells with his friends and acquaintance there—in short, with as many characters as I have fancied I could manage. ”

“ Now as in our past, only the understanding and involvement of the people through full and open debate can help to avoid serious mistakes and assure the continued dignity and safety of the nation.
Today we are asking our political system to do things of which the founding fathers never dreamed. The government they designed for a few hundred thousand people now serves a nation of almost 230 million people. Their small coastal republic now spans beyond a continent, and we now have the responsibility to help lead much of the world through difficult times to a secure and prosperous future. ”

“ Farewell, my friends! farewell, my foes! My peace with these, my love with those: The bursting tears my heart declare— Farewell, the bonie banks of Ayr! ”

“ We have 62 1/2 million people at work. Businessmen, farmers, laborers, white-collar people, all have better incomes and more of the good things of life than ever before in the history of the world.
There hasn't been a failure of an insured bank in nearly 9 years. ”

“ During the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. ”

“ Farewell!—a word that human lips bestow
On all that human hearts delight to know:
On summer skies, and scenes that change as fast;
On ocean calms, and faith as fit to last;
On Life, from Love's own arms, that breaks away ”

“ So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse! ”

“ In anguish at my last farewell,
Oh! who would dream that joy could dwell,
To make that moment bright?
Yet be my judge, each heart! and say,
Which then could most my bosom sway,
Affliction, or delight? ”