Poor conquered monarch! though that haughty glance <br />Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time, <br />And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread <br />Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime;-- <br />Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar, <br />Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this narrow floor! <br /> <br />Thou wast the victor, and all nature shrunk <br />Before the thunders of thine awful wrath; <br />The steel-armed hunter viewed thee from afar, <br />Fearless and trackless in thy lonely path! <br />The famished tiger closed his flaming eye, <br />And crouched and panted as thy step went by! <br /> <br />Thou art the vanquished, and insulting man <br />Bars thy broad bosom as a sparrow's wing; <br />His nerveless arms thine iron sinews bind, <br />And lead in chains the desert's fallen king; <br />Are these the beings that have dared to twine <br />Their feeble threads around those limbs of thine? <br /> <br />So must it be; the weaker, wiser race, <br />That wields the tempest and that rides the sea, <br />Even in the stillness of thy solitude <br />Must teach the lesson of its power to thee; <br />And thou, the terror of the trembling wild, <br />Must bow thy savage strength, the mockery of a child!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-a-caged-lion-2/
