Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Sonnets. IV. The Winged Soul

Emily Pfeiffer (1841–1890)

MY soul is like some cage-born bird, that hath

A restless prescience—howsoever won—

Of a broad pathway leading to the sun,

With promptings of an oft reprovèd faith

In sun-ward yearnings. Stricken through her breast,

And faint her wing with beating at the bars

Of sense, she looks beyond outlying stars,

And only in the Infinite sees rest.

Sad soul! If ever thy desire be bent

Or broken to thy doom, and made to share

The ruminant’s beatitude,—content,—

Chewing the cud of knowledge, with no care

For germs of life within; then will I say,

Thou art not caged, but fitly stalled in clay!