Of its stern need that roams the world, and rends
With tooth or talon; in the hawk descends
On the stunned squirrel; in the squirrel moans
As the hawk strikes; darkens the earth with bones
Of its own wreck and, hungering again,
Knows in its body the old spur. For when
Hunger, the shadow cast by death, draws near,
Life on her thousand thrones feels the one fear,
And in the lion’s roar at dusk is heard
The unassuagable, insistent word