Loveless

As some poor starveling at a palace gate

Sees curtained gleams from banquet-litten halls,

Hears song out-ringing from the festal walls,

Scents viands that shall princely palates sate,

Yet in the outer gloom may only wait,

Crouched in the cold, thrice-thankful for some least

Mean morsel flung him from the plenteous feast —

Poor bondman to the ball and chain of Fate!

So, lonely at Love's outer gate I stand

And glimpse the brightness and the bliss within,

Where love-lit smiles transmute the dark to day —

I wait without — I may not enter in;

Long, wistfully, I gaze — then void of hand

And starved of spirit, sadly turn away.