Answer:
In stanza 1, the author describes the outside world the bird is kept from. He says he knows what it feels like to lose your freedom, just like the bird in the cage, and describes a beautiful landscape that includes the sun, wind, grass, river, etc. This idealized description could represent an introduction for describing the bird's sad fate and depicts its agony in the cage (as the bird does not belong there).
The poem describes the lack of freedom through a metaphor with a bird in a cage, describes how terrible is the life without freedom. By stating he knows how to bird feels, we can conclude that the lack of liberty also affects the poet's life, because he is feeling the same as the bird.
In his poem <em>Sympathy</em>, Paul Laurence Dunbar tried to describe the oppression of African-American people, their lack of liberty, oppressed rights and bad treatment they had. With this poem, he tries to describe their miserable life without any joy or hope.
