LIMITATION, a poem

AS when the imperial bird, wide-circling, soars
     From his lonely eyrie, towered above the seas
     That wash the wild and rugged Hebrides,
     A force which he unconsciously adores
Bounds the majestic flight that heaven explores,
     And droops his haughty wing; as when the breeze
     Tempts to o'erleap their changeless boundaries
     The waves that tumble foaming to those shores;

So thou, my soul! impatient of restriction,
     With deathless hopes and longings all aglow,
     Aspirest still, and still the stern prediction
Stays thee, as them,—"No further shalt thou go!"
     But, ah! the eagle feels not thine affliction,
     Nor can the broken waves thy disappointment know.

"Limitation" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (June 1888), Poems (1898) and Poems (1916) Volume I.