Half-formed, half-conscious impulses, with its half-formed pinions
given,
Too strong for rest on earth, too weak to bear to heaven;--
And madly it beats its wings, but vainly, against its side,
For the light wind rusheth through them, mocking them in its pride.
Then, distraught, it hurries onward, the gates of heaven shut,
Flying from what it knows not,--seeking it knows not what.
While in the parching desert, amid the stones and sand,
Its stone-like eggs are lying, here and there, on every hand,
It wanders on, unheeding; and, with funereal gloom,
Trembles in every breeze each torn, dishevelled plume.
And when, with startled terror, it sees its foes around,
It strives to rise above them, but clingeth to the ground.
Then on it madly rusheth, with idly fluttering wings;
The stones in showers behind it convulsively it flings;
Onward, and ever onward,--the fleetest horses tire,--
But its strength grows less and less, their tramping ever nigher.
The poor distracted thing! it feels its lonely birth;
It may not rise to heaven, so it cometh to the earth;
To the earth, as to a mother, since to the earth it must,--
Its head in her bosom nestled, its eye veiled with her dust.
But she will not receive it. From earth and heaven outcast,
The Ostrich dies, as it lived, unfriended to the last.

Of the wild and wayward Ostrich, say, have ye never heard?
Of the poor, distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird?

But not alone it wandereth. My spirit stirs in me,
With a sort of half-fraternal and drawing sympathy;
This lonely, restless spirit, that would rise from the heavy ground