When I was a child or not a child,

They told me about a bear once wild,

Who, chained for years to an iron stake

With a ten-foot iron chain, would make

His shuffling circuit all day round

His twenty feet of unwalled ground,

How one night when boys cut the chain,

The bear next day like my wind-up train

Still lumbered round his dusty ring,

The chain no drag on his traveling.

We are all bears, all more or less

Kept in some circle of usualness,

And if we think, and as I assert,

We choose our chains, they do not hurt,

They glitter, they stretch, they dignify,

They could be cut if we cared to try,

One part of the story is left out.

It says that safely standing about

Are watchers ready to run or kill

If we break loose. We never will;

The chains are strong. But we are feared;

We do not know how we are feared.