The Eagle
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.
- national geography
- a sunny day near the seaside cliff
Themes
- human and nature
- man and masculinity
<First stanza>
- ends with "-ands"
1. He clasps the crag with crooked hands.
- "clasps" and "crooked" sound quite masculine
- "crag" is a part of a cliff that juts out from the main body of massive rock. Usually crag is hard and dangerous for human to access, which shows that the eagle is out of reach.
- alliteration of "c" sounds, harsh and hard.
- personification: "hands", not claws. The poet used the eagle to describe about human.
2. Close to the sun in lonely lands,
- The eagle is so high that it seems closer to the sun than the land.
- alliteration of "l" sounds, "lonely lands"
- "lonely lands" high rock surrounded by sky
- "lands" is plural, which is another evidence that this poem is related to human world, where a lot of lands exist.
3. Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
- The eagle is surrounded by the blue sky.
- "azure" usually describes clean, deep blue ocean as well as the sky. The eagle is at the center of the blue sky.
- He seems to be going to do something amazing, but the first stanza finishes with "he stands".
-"ring'd", not ringed.
<Second Stanza>
- ends with "-alls".
4. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls.
- wrinkles on the sea are waves seen from a far distance, which is the eagle's perspective.
- The eagle looks down the sea from a high position that he doesn't see the chaos of crushing waves; he just sees the small lines.
- "wrinkled" and "crawls" normally relate to people. Wrinkles are physical indication of old, while crawling is what babies do. The writer subtly shows a life cycle of human through nature.
- "wrinkled" is imperfection
5. He watches from his mountain walls.
- The eagle has been pretty passive: All he has done so far is grasping the crag, standing on there, and watching the wrinkled sea.
- the mountain walls are described as "his", as if he owns them. This shows his power and authority.
6. And like a thunderbolt he falls.
- He jumps down from the cliff in a very high speed, like a thunderbolt.
- "falls" is also passive. He doesn't dive, he falls, letting gravity do all the work for him.
- simile "thunderbolt". This shows how the speaker views the eagle. We can see thunderbolts for a quick split second, like an eagle falling from a cliff. thunderbolt like Zeus'.
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