They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, <br />Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours <br />Commiserating each the other’s woe, <br />To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow. <br />Man could but little proffer in exchange <br />Save that his cages have a larger range. <br />That lion with his lordly, untamed heart <br />Has in some man his human counterpart, <br />Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped, <br />But in the stifling flesh securely trapped. <br />Gaunt eagle whose raw pinions stain the bars <br />That prison you, so men cry for the stars! <br />Some delve down like the mole far underground, <br />(Their nature is to burrow, not to bound), <br />Some, like the snake, with changeless slothful eye, <br />Stir not, but sleep and smoulder where they lie. <br />Who is most wretched, these caged ones, or we, <br />Caught in a vastness beyond our sight to see?<br /><br />Countee Cullen<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thoughts-in-a-zoo/
