Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/30



HERE is no truth in faces, save in children: They laugh and frown and weep from nature's keys; But we who meet the world give out false notes, The true note dying muffled in the heart.

O, there be woful prayers and piteous wailing, That spirits hear, from lives that starve for love! The body's food is bread; and wretches' cries Are heard and answered: but the spirit's food Is love; and hearts that starve may die in agony And no physician mark the cause of death.

You cannot read the faces; they are masks,— Like yonder woman, smiling at the lips,