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Sagas
of Vaster Britain: Poems of the Race, the Empire and
the Divinity of Man
by
William Wilfred Campbell
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CAPTIVITY
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THOU,
O my soul,
Thou art as an eagle
Caged in this agonised
Iron of earth’s
gloom;
Evermore beating
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5 |
At
these confining,
Effort-confounding,
Bars of thy doom.
Evermore
chafing,
Restless and longing,
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10 |
For
those far rose-peaks,
Splendid, of light;—
That large sky-vista,
That unfettered freedom,
Wide for thy flight.
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15 |
Here thou art caged,
Thy hooded eye darkened,
Thy soaring wings wounded,
Thy splendour curbed fast;
That somewhere and sometime,
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20 |
Erstwhile
enfranchised,
Met the red sunlance,
Measured the vast.
Here
in thy prison
Of fettered contumely,
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25 |
Environ
ignoble,
All high effort wronging;
Thou canst never soar to
Those vasts of the sunlit,
Far heights of thy longing.
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30 |
But thou, O my soul,
Out of these cage-bars,
Forth to thy freedom,
Unshackled, alone,
Thou wilt go outward,
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35 |
Skyward
and sunward,
Vastward and strengthward,
Back to thine own.
Where
on those far-peaks,
Thou with thy kindred,
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40 |
Kinglike
and soaring,
Eyeing the sun;
Thou wilt drink deep of that
Vastness and glory,
Where sky-winds run.
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45 |
Forgetting this life-curbed,
Prisoned, flesh-shackled,
Earth-enmanacled
Thing that thou wast;—
There in thine eyrie,
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50 |
Thou
wilt regain thee
All thou hast longed for,
All thou hast lost.
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