True friendship’s laws are by this rule express’d,
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

These lines come from Alexander Pope’s “Epistle to Miss Blount, on her leaving the Town, after the Coronation” (1714), written as Teresa (or Martha) Blount departed London for the country after the festivities surrounding George I’s coronation. Pope, closely connected with the Blount sisters, frames the occasion as a test of genuine attachment: true friends neither cling possessively nor grow cold with absence. In the social world of early‑eighteenth‑century London—marked by seasonal migrations between town and country and by the rituals of visits and leave‑takings—the couplet distills an ideal of friendship expressed through gracious hospitality and ungrudging farewell.

The couplet proposes a rule for “true friendship”: greet arrivals with genuine welcome, and allow departures without resentment or clinging. Friendship, in this view, is generous rather than proprietary—offering presence gladly but not demanding it. The balanced parallelism (“Welcome… speed…”) underscores reciprocity and restraint: affection is shown both in hospitality and in the grace of letting go. Pope’s phrasing also implies that friendship is proved at thresholds—beginnings and endings—where ego, jealousy, or neediness can intrude. The maxim remains influential because it frames friendship as a practice of freedom: to enjoy companionship while respecting another person’s autonomy.