A Waif by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My soul is like a poor caged bird to-night, / Beating its wings against the prison bars, / Longing to reach the outer world of light, / And, all untrammeled, soar among the stars. / Wild, mighty thoughts struggle within my soul / For utterance. Great waves of passion roll / Through all my being. As the lightnings play / Through thunder clouds, so beams of blinding light / Flash for a moment on my darkened brain -- / Quick, sudden, glaring beams, that fade away / And leave me in a darker, deeper night.

Oh, poet souls! that struggle all in vain / To live in peace and harmony with earth, / It cannot be! They must endure the pain / Of conscience and of unacknowledged worth, / Moving and dwelling with the common herd, / Whose highest thought has never strayed as far, / Or never strayed beyond the horizon's bar; / Whose narrow hearts and souls are never stirred / With keenest pleasures, or with sharpest pain; / Who rise and eat and sleep, and rise again, / Nor question why or wherefore. Men whose minds / Are never shaken by wild passion winds; / Women whose broadest, deepest realm of thought / The bridal veil will cover. / Who see not / God's mighty work lying undone to-day, -- / Work that a woman's hands can do as well / Oh, soul of mine; better to live alway / In this tumultuous inward pain and strife, / Doing the work that in thy reach doth fall, / Weeping because thou canst not do it all; / Oh, better, my soul, in this unrest to dwell, / Than grovel as _they_ grovel on through life: