From the Sway of the Pleasure Principle: Ghost of a Tiger

In my soul the afternoon grows wider and I reflect

That the tiger invoked in my verse

Is a ghost of a tiger, a symbol,

A series of literary tropes

And memories from the encyclopedia

And not the deadly tiger, the fateful jewel

That, under the sun or the varying moon,

In Sumatra or Bengal goes on fulfilling

Its round of love, of idleness and death.

To the symbolic tiger I have opposed