Both Uses
constrained
in
Crediting Poetry, by Seamus Heaney
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- Which is why for years I was bowed to the desk like some monk bowed over his prie-dieu, some dutiful contemplative pivoting his understanding in an attempt to bear his portion of the weight of the world, knowing himself incapable of heroic virtue or redemptive effect, but constrained by his obedience to his rule to repeat the effort and the posture.†
*constrained = restricted; or lacking spontaneity
- Then, overcome with pity and constrained by his faith to love the life in all creatures great and small, Kevin stayed immobile for hours and days and nights and weeks, holding out his hand until the eggs hatched and the fledglings grew wings, true to life if subversive of common sense, at the intersection of natural process and the glimpsed ideal, at one and the same time a signpost and a reminder.†
Definitions:
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(1)
(constrained) restricted or inhibited
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely (and archaically), constrain can mean to force someone to do something.