"The Panther" is about being caged and locked up and never knowing what freedom or what other luxuries may be like. When Rainer Maria Rilke says “His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.”, Rainer is talking about how the panther (or any other oppressed being) only sees the limitations and prison that they are confined to, and do not see outside or further than the so called “bars” (to me the bars are limitations and standards that are held by others that one must follow and obey). The stanza where Rainer talks about “he paces in cramped circles, over and over” to me is talking about living a routine over and over. How the panther (or other being) lives no other life or excitement than walking in small circles. In another translation of The Panther the translator, Marry Mills, translates this line as “ever decreasing circles” which to me says that Rainer was trying to describe the panthers routine life (the cramped circles) becoming smaller and smaller thus the panthers life becoming shorter and shorter. Rainer in the same stanza goes on to describe the panthers “movement of his powerful soft strides” and then says “in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.” These lines meant something very different for me. He describes the panther’s strides as powerful yet soft. I saw this as him describing how this powerful animal is be forced to take such soft strides due to his captivity. The next line after, “in which a might will stands paralyzed”, was also translated very differently for me. When I first read the line I thought more of how any mighty being would be paralyzed in being forced to live behind bars not knowing anything other than the bars. To only know captivity behind bars and see no world behind them would paralyze any mighty willful being is what I felt like Rainer was trying to communicate with that line. The last stanza Rainer describes