Hunger

From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 23, 1915. By Dana Burnet.

The Starving Men they walk the dusk,
    With hunger in their eyes.
To them a Lighted House is like
    A lamp of Paradise.

It is the Window in the dusk
    That marks the drifter’s coast;
It is the thought of Love and Light
    That mocks the drifter most.

Now I have been a Starving Man
    And walked the winter dusk;
And I have known how life may be
    A Heaven and a Husk.

The Fainting Hands they pulled my sleeve,
    And bade me curse the Light.
But I had seen a Rich Man’s face
    That looked into the night.

A hungry face, a brother face,
    That stared into the gloom,
And starved for Life and starved for Love
    Within a lighted room.