Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This quote, from the 19th-century poem “Youth and Age” by English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a moving portrayal of friendship. When we have good friends in our lives, we feel protected and grounded by them. In the rest of the poem, Coleridge ruminates on the passage of time and the fading of youth. Over time, these “sheltering trees” will slowly change in ways both seen and unseen, but remain steadfast. As we grow older, our branches reach out further, and our roots will grow deeper in one anchored place.