dots-menu
×

Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Emily Pfeiffer (1841–1890)

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

By Sonnets. I. Evolution

Emily Pfeiffer (1841–1890)

HUNGER that strivest in the restless arms

Of the sea-flower, that drivest rooted things

To break their moorings, that unfoldest wings

In creatures to be rapt above thy harms;

Hunger, of whom the hungry-seeming waves

Were the first ministers, till, free to range,

Thou mad’st the Universe thy park and grange,

What is it thine insatiate heart still craves?

Sacred disquietude, divine unrest!

Maker of all that breathes the breath of life,

No unthrift greed spurs thine unflagging zest,

No lust self-slaying hounds thee to the strife;

Thou art the Unknown God on whom we wait:

Thy path the course of our unfolding fate.