SIBERIA, a poem

THE night-wind drives across the leaden skies,
     And fans the brooding earth with icy wings;
     Against the coast loud-booming billows flings,
And soughs through forest-deeps with moaning sighs.
Above the gorge, where snow, deep-fallen lies,
     A softness lending e'en to savage things—
     Above the gelid source of mountain springs,
A solitary eagle, circling, flies.

O pathless woods, O isolating sea,
     O steppes interminable, hopeless, cold,
O grievous distances, imagine ye,
     Imprisoned here, the human soul to hold?
Free, in a dungeon,—as yon falcon free,—
     It soars beyond your ken its loved ones to enfold!

"Siberia" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Century Magazine (March 1889), Poems (1898) and Poems (1916) Volume I.