Explore "Loveless" by Leigh Gordon Giltner on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.