Unequal Souls

A. Mary F. Robinson

Where eddying shocks of air and whirling light

Beat all their broken waves to mist, and fall

About the unseen, impenetrable wall

That girdles heaven round, there strains in flight

One tempest-baffled soul, whose eager sight

Searches the upper sky, whose pinions small

Quiver to answer some imagined call,

But cannot free them from the wind and night.

And far away along the spiral track

Whereup, having passed their mortal period,

Flash perfect souls to lose themselves in God,

One stops, and cries for freedom, looking back

To her whose chaining love forbids him rise,

With ineffectual flight and darkening eyes.