Two poems being alike is a prevalent element in literature. Maybe one writer got the inspiration from the other or maybe the two did not know each other at all. “The Panther” by Rainier Maria Rilke and “Autumn Song” by Charles Baudelaire both have a sense of missing something. Charles Baudelaire’s “Song of Autumn I” is a poem about Autumn arriving, signaling that summer is over and winter will be here soon. Baudelaire misses the summer and dreads the coming winter, along with winter comes the symbolism of deaths of individuals around him. Baudelaire’s life was pretty depressing especially since his first collection of poems was not well received by the public. Rilke’s “The Panther” seems to talk about a panther, although not mentioned in anything but the title, being caged up in bars. All the panther ever sees are these bars and the occasional world when the cover of the cage is lifted. The world enters the pupils and it makes the panther want the world. The cover always gets put back on however and the world is taken away from him yet again. A sense of missing and the urge to want are present within both, creating an effect of sympathy within the reader. Baudelaire’s style of writing was nonconforming to most other writers in his time.…show more content… The image passes through the body, which has ceased its endless circling and seems to await a command. Yet when the image reaches the animal’s heart, it disappears without a trace, leaving the cat to pursue its pacing in the void and leaving the reader to feel sadness at the waste” (Slomski).
The Panther misses the world and the freedom. Rilke creates the image of a panther even though he uses such miniscule amounts of detail and never actually talks about a panther or a cage in the poem itself. The panther wants out, but getting out is not an
