THERE'S A THREE-PENNY Lunch on Dover Street With a cardboard sign in the window: EAT. Three steps down to the basement room, Two gas jets in a sea of gloom; Four-square counter, stove in the center, Heavy odor of food as you enter; A kettle of soup as large as a vat, Potatoes, cabbage, morsels of fat Bubbling up in a savory smoke -- Food for the gods when the gods are broke. A wrecked divinity serving it up, A hunk of bread and a steaming cup; Three penny each, or two for a nickel; An extra cent for a relish of pickle. Slopping it up, no time for the graces -- Why should they care, these men with faces Gaunt with hunger, battered with weather, In walking the streets for days together? No delicate sipping, no leisurely talk -- The rule of the place is Eat and Walk. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SPELLIN' BEE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR MISS KILMANSEGG AND HER PRECIOUS LEG: HER BIRTH by THOMAS HOOD SONNETS OF MANHOOD: 26. BEYOND by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) A LANCASHIRE DIALOGUE, OCCASIONED BY A PREACHER WITHOUT NOTES by JOHN BYROM TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. TWIN STATUES OF AMENOPHIS III AT THEBES by EDWARD CARPENTER |