Heart Hunger Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCD EFGHIJ KLILMNO PFFQJRSHDTU VWXYLZ| THERE is no truth in faces save in children | A |
| They laugh and frown and weep from nature's keys | B |
| But we who meet the world give out false notes | C |
| The true note dying muffled in the heart | D |
| - | |
| O there be woeful prayers and piteous wailing | E |
| That spirits hear from lives that starve for love | F |
| The body's food is bread and wretches' cries | G |
| Are heard and answered but the spirit's food | H |
| Is love and hearts that starve may die in agony | I |
| And no physician mark the cause of death | J |
| - | |
| You cannot read the faces they are masks | K |
| Like yonder woman smiling at the lips | L |
| Silk clad bejeweled lapped with luxury | I |
| And beautiful and young ay smiling at the lips | L |
| But never in the eyes from inner light | M |
| A gracious temple hung with flowers without | N |
| Within a naked corpse upon the stones | O |
| - | |
| O years and years ago the hunger came | P |
| The desert thirst for love she prayed for love | F |
| She cried out in the night time of her soul for Jove | F |
| The cup they gave was poison whipped to froth | Q |
| For years she drank it knowing it for death | J |
| She shrieked in soul against it but must drink | R |
| The skies were dumb she dared not swoon or scream | S |
| As Indian mothers see babes die for food | H |
| She watched dry eyed beside her starving heart | D |
| And only sobbed in secret for its gasps | T |
| And only raved one wild hour when it died | U |
| - | |
| O Pain have pity Numb her quivering sense | V |
| O Fame bring guerdon Thrice a thousand years | W |
| Thy boy thief with the fox beneath his cloak | X |
| Has let it gnaw his side unmoved and held the world | Y |
| And she a slight woman smiling at the lips | L |
| With repartee and jest a corpse heart in her breast | Z |
John Boyle O'reilly
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