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.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) - 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater


English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which has made them especially vulnerable for later critic.
"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, And slips into the bosom of the lake. So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom and be lost in me." (from 'The Princess')


Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of twelve children. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was a clergyman and rector, who was notoriously absentminded and suffered from depression. His dark moods often overshadowed the family. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. His first drama in blank verse Tennyson wrote at fourteen. After four unhappy school years at Louth, where he was bullied by his big boys and masters, he was tutored at home. Tennyson then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, but he did not aim at academic excellence. He joined the literary club 'The Apostles', where he met Arthur Hallam who became his closest friend. The undergraduate society discussed contemporary social, religious, scientific, and literary issues. Encouraged by 'The Apostles', Tennyson published POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL (1830), which included the popular 'Mariana'. He travelled with Hallam on the Continent. By 1830, Hallam had become engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily. After his father's death in 1831 Tennyson returned to Somersby without a degree.


Tennyson's next book, POEMS (1833), received unfavorable reviews, and he ceased to publish for nearly ten years. Hallam died suddenly on the same year in Vienna. It was a heavy blow to Tennyson. He began to write 'Im Memorian' for his lost friend – the work took seventeen years to finish. A revised volume of Poems, which included the 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'The Lotus-eaters'. 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'Ulysses' appeared in the two-volume POEMS (1842), and established his reputation as a writer. In 'Ulysses Tennyson portrayed the Greek after his travels, longing past days: "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"


After marrying in 1850 During his later years Tennyson produced some of his best poems., whom Tennyson had already met in 1830 and who had been the object of his affection for a long time, the couple settled in 1853 in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wright. From there the family moved in 1869 to Aldworth, Surrey. Tennyson's life was then uneventful. In London he was a regular guest of the literary and artistic salon of Mrs Prinsep at Little Holland House. Tennyson's mother died in 1865. On the funeral day he wrote in his diary: "We all of us hate the pompous funeral we have to join in, black plumes, black coaches and nonsense. We should like all to go in white and gold rather, but convention is against us."


Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, In Memoriam (1850). The personal sorrow led the poet to explore his thoughts on faith, immortality, and the meaning of loss: "O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil." Among its other passages is a symbolic voyage ending in a vision of Hallam as the poet's muse. Some critics have seen in the work ideas, that anticipated Darwin's theory of natural selection. "Who trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation's final law - / Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek'd against his creed – ", Tennyson wrote. He was born in the same year as Darwin, but his view about natural history, however, was based on catastrophe theory, not evolution.
"Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred." (from 'The Charge of the Light Brigade')


The patriotic poem 'Charge of the Light Brigade', published in MAUD (1855), is one of Tennyson's best known works, although at first Maud was found obscure or morbid by critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone. Later the poem about the Light Brigade inspired Michael Curtiz's film from 1936, starring Errol Flynn. Historically the fight during the Crimean war brough to light the incompetent organization of the English army. However, the stupid mistake described in the poem honored the soldier's courage and heroic action.


During his later years Tennyson produced some of his best poems. ENOCH ARDEN (1864) was based on a true story of a sailor, thought to be drowned at sea but who returned home after several years obly to find that his wife had remarried. In the poem Enoch Arden, Philip Ray and Annie Lee grow up together. Enoch wins her hand. He sails abroad and is shipwrecked for 10 years on a deserted island. Meanwhile Annie has been reduced to poverty. Philip asks her to marry him. Enoch returns and witnesses their happiness, but hides that he is alive and sacrifices his happiness for theirs. An Enoch Arden has come to mean a person who truly loves someone better than himself. The poem ends simply with the lines, "So past the strong heoic soul away. / And when they buried him, the little port / Had seldom seen a costlier funeral." IDYLLS OF THE KING (1859-1885) dealt with the Arthurian legeds, which had fascinated Tennyson since his youth, and THE ANCIENT SAGE (1885) and AKBAR'S DREAM (1892) testified the poet's faith in the redemption offered by love. Despite Tennyson pessimism about the human condition, he believed in God.


In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them poetic dramas QUEEN MARY (1875) and HAROLD (1876). In 1884 he was created a baron. Tennyson died at Aldwort on October 6, 1892, and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Soon he became the favorite target of attacks of many English and American poets who saw him as a representative of narrow patriotism and sentimentality. Later critics have praised again Tennyson. T.S. Eliot has called him "the great master of metric as well as of melancholia" and that he possessed the finest ear of any English poet since Milton.


POEM SUMMARY:

This poem is very short but full of meaning. Every verse consists of eight syllables with an alternating stress pattern of weak, strong, weak, and strong. The eight syllables can be divided into four feet. The first syllable of each foot is weak and the second is strong. Poems with eight-syllable verses and a weak-strong stress pattern are in iambic tetrameter.


The poem has regular rhyme. The first three verses all rhyme as well as the final three. Thus, the rhyme scheme is a,a,a,b,b,b.


The first verse of the poem exemplifies personification. Though the eagle has claws, Tennyson uses the word "hands". In the second verse, Tennyson makes it clear that the eagle is very high in the sky when he says it is close to the sun. The phrase "lonely lands" expresses the eagle's solitude. It is also an example of alliteration because "lonely" and "lands" both start with the letter "l".


In the third verse, Tennyson expresses the eagle's connection to the sky. The sky is described as an azure world which completely encircles the eagle. The word "stands", not a word that is usually associated with the eagle, is another example of personification.


The final three verses of the poem mark a shift in the direction of the poem because they describe the ocean, the eagle's home of mountain walls, and finally, his descent to the world below. The sea has the appearance of being wrinkled and it merely crawls. This is in contrast to the swift motion of the eagle through the sky. It is also important to note that the eagle is so high in the sky that everything seems slow and distant. When the eagle watches from his mountain walls, one senses that the eagle has a good view of all below and also that the moment the eagle spots prey, it will be attacked. This is emphasized in the final line which compares the eagle to a thunderbolt. The reader senses the speed of the eagle as it flies from high in the sky to the world below. This comparison with "like" is an excellent example of a simile.


Tennyson's poem "The Eagle", though short, has regular rhyme and other poetic devices such as iambic tetrameter, alliteration, personification and simile. The first three verses are rather different from the final three. The first three stanzas focus on the eagle but the final three focus on the eagle's world and nature. The literary devices of the poem and the powerful imagery combine to make it a classic in the world of English poetry.