The following poem talks about our desires to be more, and how we almost achieve it, but then in the busyness of life we fail. 

 "Have we not all, amid life's petty strife,

a pure ideal of a noble life

that once seemed possible? 

Did we not hear the flutter of its wings

and feel it near, 

and just within our reach? 

It was.  And yet

we lost it in this daily jar and fret." 

Adelaide A. Procter