Honoured I lived e'erwhile with honoured men In opulent state. My table nightly spread Found guests of worth, peer, priest and citizen, And poet crowned, and beauty garlanded. Nor these alone, for hunger too I fed, And many a lean tramp and sad Magdalen Passed from my doors less hard for sake of bread. Whom grudged I ever purse or hand or pen? To-night, unwelcomed at these gates of woe I stand with churls, and there is none to greet My weariness with smile or courtly show Nor, though I hunger long, to bring me meat. God! what a little accident of gold Fences our weakness from the wolves of old! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY BEFORE BANNOCKBURN by ROBERT BURNS ODE WRITTEN IN [THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR] 1746 by WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) THE BLACK RIDERS: 38 by STEPHEN CRANE SPRING WATER by KENNETH SLADE ALLING SLEEPING AND WAKING by JANE BARLOW GOOD FRYDAY by JOSEPH BEAUMONT |