Friendship Poem By: H.W. Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

In this quote Longfellow says how he shot an arrow into the sky and didn’t see where it landed. Then he said later on he found it but it wasn’t broken. The arrow had been in the heart of his friend. Metaphorically the friend protected the arrow and kept it from breaking.