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.