Rosemary Dobson: The Tiger

The tiger paces up and down
Behind the black bars of the page,
He pads on silent angry feet,
His heart is smouldering with rage.

Captive within the lines of type
He seeks, and yet can never find,
The world where he was free to range:
He is the poet's furious mind.

His are the unblinking eyes that stare
Into the gold heart of the sun,
He rakes the sky of stars and hunts
The darkness down, and is not done.

His was the world to roam, who now
Is captive to the black-barred page.
Reader, unlock the lines and face
The splendid danger of his rage!


Published in Child with a Cockatoo (1955). A gloss on every poem every written about tigers, panthers, jaguars, et al. Being a gloss, it's arguably over-explicit ("He is the poet's furious mind"), but by the end this doesn't weaken its narrowly focused achievement.