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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BEAR, by ROBERT FROST Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The bear puts both arms round the tree above her Last Line: When sedentary and when peripatetic Subject(s): Animals; Bears | |||
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her And draws it down as if it were a lover And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-by, Then lets it snap back upright in the sky. Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall (She's making her cross-country in the fall). Her great weight creaks the barbed wire in its staples As she flings over and off down through the maples, Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair. Such is the uncaged progress of the bear. The world has room to make a bear feel free; The universe seems cramped to you and me. Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage, That all day fights a nervous inward rage, His mood rejecting all his mind suggests. He paces back and forth and never rests The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet, The telescope at one end of his beat, And at the other end the microscope, Two instruments of nearly equal hope, And in conjunction giving quite a spread. Or if he rests from scientific tread, Tis only to sit back and sway his head Through ninety-odd degrees of arc, it seems, Between two metaphysical extremes. He sits back on his fundamental butt With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut (He almost looks religious but he's not), And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek, At one extreme agreeing with one Greek At the other agreeing with another Greek Which may be thought, but only so to speak. A baggy figure, equally pathetic When sedentary and when peripatetic. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IAMBIC FEET CONSIDERED AS HONORABLE SCARS by WILLIAM MEREDITH TOM DANCERS GIFT OF A WHITEBARK PINE CONE by MARY OLIVER THE BEAR AND THE MAN by ROBERT BLY THE BLACK BEAR by JACK PRELUTSKY THE POLAR BEAR by JACK PRELUTSKY BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE BEAR by EDITH SITWELL FOR A GRIZZLY BEAR SLEEPING by DAVID WAGONER SEEN FROM THE PORCH, A BEAR BY THE HOUSE by ROBERT WRIGLEY |
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