The Eagle
(fragment)
First published in 1851. It has not been altered.
He clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;1
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Notes
1 One of Tennyson’s most magically descriptive lines; nothing could exceed the vividness of the words “wrinkled” and “crawls” here.