The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This poem was labeled as a fragment by Tennyson, but I think it's the perfect length. It is a beautiful moment or two in time captured in all its majesty. I'm not sure why, but I really didn't want to use a bald eagle for the picture here. Perhaps it's because Tennyson would probably have been writing about the types of eagles you see in England or Europe, and from what I understand, they're not of the bald variety. More than that, though, I didn't want to bring the symbolic baggage that the bald eagle carries with it. It may be very noble and good things that he represents, but he's always representing something, and I wanted this post to be about the bird himself.