The Eagle

'The Eagle'

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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

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

The poem, Eagle, by Tennyson, is an amazingly powerful poem although it consists of just two stanzas. The poem is about a lone eagle perched atop a steep rock in the sea.

Eagles are large, powerful birds of prey. They have large, hooked beaks and excellent eyesight. They also have powerful talons which help them catch prey. Eagles build their nests on high cliffs or in tall trees. There are over 60 different species of eagle in the world.

The poem consists of two stanzas, each consisting of three rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. This type of three rhyming lines is called triplets (couplets being more common).

In the first stanza, the poet describes the bird, perched high up on the rock, with a sense of admiration. The bird holds tightly to the rock with his iron like talons and stands still against the gusty wind that sweeps against him. He appears close to the sun than to the earth due to the majestic height of his position. He is circled by the blue sky.

In the second stanza the poet describes the sea as it appears to the bird. The huge rolling waves of the sea are reduced to wrinkles from that great height. In the last line the bird ‘falls’ like a thunderbolt to the sea below in an awesome climax.

Now, let’s look at the poem more closely and analyze it line-by-line.

The poem begins with a superb close-up.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

The poet tries to humanize the bird using the words, ‘he’ and ‘hands’. Even the verb ‘clasps’ has connotations of warmth and friendship as when we shake hands with others. However, here it refers to the tenacious grip of the bird in his effort to balance himself on the rock which is exposed to the unrelenting blasts of wind. ‘Crooked’ means ugly and deformed and it creates an unpleasant picture in our minds. The harsh alliteration of ‘cr’ sound heightens that effect.

The second line associates the bird with the realm of the sky:

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Suddenly, the close-up changes into a long shot like in a film. Now, we see the bird against the sky, at a superior height. The phrase ‘lonely lands’ seems to suggest the eagle’s domination of the sky. The prominent assonance of the ‘o’ sound further accentuates the sense of loneliness and distance. The alliteration of ‘l’ sounds contributes to the musical quality of the line.

The third line of the first stanza further describes the sky:

Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The words ‘azure world’ refers to the sky of the colour of ocean blue. The bird is circled or ‘ring’d’ by the blue sky. The passive action of ‘stands’ which rhymes with ‘hands’ and ‘lands’ creates an effect of stillness or inertness. This is like a still shot in cinema. The caesura or the comma before ‘he’ further heightens this stillness.

The second stanza begins with a bird’s eye-view of the sea which appears to be crawling beneath the towering cliff:

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

The waves of the sea look like wrinkles of a cloth or skin from that great height. The rolling of the waves is diminished to ‘crawling’. The word ‘crawls’ also reminds us about the reptiles who are eaten by eagles. In addition, the word ‘wrinkled’ reminds us of an old person while ‘crawls’ reminds us of a baby. Taken together, it might be suggestive of the life cycle of the humans or nature.

The next line takes us back to the eagle who appears to be poised for action:

He watches from his mountain walls,

It is not clear what he ‘watches’ from that great height. The eagle is a bird with a sharp vision and he may be watching some prey (a fish for example) far below. The word also builds up some tension as it prepares him for action. The words ‘mountain walls’ suggest the sharp incline of the rock and its inaccessibility.

The last line brings the poem to a superb climax:

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Finally, the eagle dives off the cliff and swoops downward in a straight line in a graceful movement. It is an effortless action which depends on the gravitational acceleration. The word ‘thunderbolt’ suggests the speed with which a thunderbolt strikes and thus the swiftness of the eagle. Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning and storms in Norse mythology. The bird may be diving at its prey which has very little chance of escape given the lightening speed at which it descends on him.

It is notoriously difficult to pin point the themes of this poem as it lends itself to multifarious meanings. However, one of the themes may be the superiority of animals over man who prides himself as the most intelligent being on earth. It might also carry themes such as, freedom, fate, power of nature, etc.

Alfred Lord Tennyson is considered to be the greatest of the Victorian poets and is well known for craftsmanship in poetry. His greatest poem is In Memoriam, which was dedicated to his friend Arthur Hallam whose death left the poet heartbroken.