When I first read this poem, I thought it was about an animal. But then, once I reread it, I thought that perhaps it is about a person. Let me explain. Just like the Emily Dickinson poem, this poem is about how we are all trapped inside our minds. I think that the "constantly passing bars" symbolizes the constrictions of society. "As he paces in cramped circles" represents the man pacing his thoughts in his mind. Finally, the "image that enters in" represents a thought that keeps recurring in the mind that he overanalyzes and digests. This is what I took after reading the last line "an image enters in... and plunges into the heart and is gone." The central theme of the poem is that people are trapped not only by the conformity of society, but also the destruction of our minds. The tone of the poem is one that seems kind of depressed. Terms such as "weary" "bars" "cramped" "paralyzed" "arrested" and "plunges" are all in here. The words themselves kind of represent defeat in some way.
The form of the pattern of the poem is a somewhat rhymed format. The words don't all rhyme, but they all are kind of stuck in the perameters of the rhyme two lines ahead of it. The imagery in this poem is all about movement and vision. For example, it starts out talking about "vision" and later goes on to talk about "pupils" and an "image. These all correlate with the sense of sight. The imagery of movement includes "passing" "movement" "strides" "ritual dance" "paralyzed" "rushes" and "plunges." Although the person is trapped, the movement is essential to the poem because it represents the the person (or being) is still living and moving. Although he is trapped, he is still functioning and breathing. We constantly are trapped in this world behind the bars of the world's vision of how we should live our lives. We pace around, hoping life will change. But then more people judege and watch us, so we feel forced to life life based on the limitations and guidelines of humanity.
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