While the music fell and rose,
And the dance reeled to its close,
Where her round of costly woes
    Fashion strolled,
I beheld with shuddering fear
Wolves’ eyes through the windows peer;
Little dream they you are near,
    Hunger and Cold!

When the toiler’s heart you clutch,
Conscience is not valued much,
He recks not a bloody smutch
    On his gold: 
Everything to you defers,
You are potent reasoners,
At your whisper Treason stirs,
    Hunger and Cold!

Rude comparisons you draw,
Words refuse to sate your maw,
Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law
    Cannot hold: 
You’re not clogged with foolish pride,
But can seize a right denied: 
Somehow God is on your side,
    Hunger and Cold!

You respect no hoary wrong
More for having triumphed long;
Its past victims, haggard throng,
    From the mould
You unbury:  swords and spears
Weaker are than poor men’s tears,
Weaker than your silent years,
    Hunger and Cold!

Let them guard both hall and bower;
Through the window you will glower,
Patient till your reckoning hour
    Shall be tolled;
Cheeks are pale, but hands are red,
Guiltless blood may chance be shed,
But ye must and will be fed,
    Hunger and Cold!

God has plans man must not spoil,
Some were made to starve and toil,
Some to share the wine and oil,
    We are told: 
Devil’s theories are these,
Stifling hope and love and peace,
Framed your hideous lusts to please,
    Hunger and Cold!

Scatter ashes on thy head,
Tears of burning sorrow shed,
Earth! and be by Pity led
    To Love’s fold;
Ere they block the very door
With lean corpses of the poor,
And will hush for naught but gore,
    Hunger and Cold!

THE LANDLORD

What boot your houses and your lands? 
  In spite of close-drawn deed and fence,
Like water, twixt your cheated hands,
They slip into the graveyard’s sands,
  And mock your ownership’s pretence.

How shall you speak to urge your right,
  Choked with that soil for which you lust? 
The bit of clay, for whose delight
You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might
  Foreclose this very day in dust.

Fence as you please, this plain poor man,
  Whose only fields are in his wit,
Who shapes the world, as best he can,
According to God’s higher plan,
  Owns you, and fences as is fit.

Though yours the rents, his incomes wax
  By right of eminent domain;
From factory tall to woodman’s axe,
All things on earth must pay their tax,
  To feed his hungry heart and brain.

He takes you from your easy-chair,
  And what he plans that you must do;
You sleep in down, eat dainty fare,—­
He mounts his crazy garret-stair
  And starves, the landlord over you.