The Eagle

One of the prominent themes in this poem is that even the most majestic of creatures (including people) have limitations. In poetry and literature, the eagle is often a symbol for majesty, power,...

"The wrinkled sea" could be a wonderfully imaginative description of the peaks and valleys formed by the waves below the eagle's viewpoint as the tide "crawls" in and out along the shoreline....

In his short poem “The Eagle,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson skillfully portrays a solitary bird in its original wild environment. At the same time, he conveys a message about authenticity and boldness as...

I do agree that "The Eagle" isn't mere description. It if were, it is unlikely that we would care very much about reading it, especially nearly two hundred years after it was written. The point of...

"The Eagle" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is a short, six-line poem consisting of two stanzas. Both stanzas are three lines long. Each stanza uses a single rhyme sound, and thus, the rhyme scheme is aaa...

This is an interesting question. The poem is only six lines, and about half of those lines are dedicated to describing the eagle. On one hand, you could make a claim that the eagle is part of the...

Individual readers are going to interpret this line differently. For me personally, no, I do not think "the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls" shows the eagle's pride. On one hand, the line is very...

In this brief poem, "crooked hands" is being used to describe an eagle's crooked claws. The eagle, often described as a noble and regal creature, is old and decrepit. The eagle still sits high on a...

The poem "The Eagle" by Alfred Lord Tennyson is often admired as much as the majestic bird itself. From the very beginning in the first line "He clasps the crag with crooked hands" readers see...

The expression "crooked hands" is significant. Tennyson uses it when we might expect him to use "claws" or "feet" instead. What he's doing here is emphasizing certain characteristics of the eagle...

Although there has been some discussion over the years as to the meaning of the last line of the poem, the most common interpretation is that the eagle does indeed die, a victim of old age and...

Not all poetry includes moral or ethical lessons. Sometimes, a poet is simply moved by an experience, an emotion, or a happening and feels as though the only way to capture it is to write it down...

No, the poem isn't just about a bird; we can also interpret it as a comment on absolute power and the effects of such power on humans. Personifying the eagle as having "crooked hands," gives us a...

This language to describe the sea is actually really interesting and creative. Think about what the sea looks like when you are standing on the shore: the waves have some amount of height (a few...

In line 3, when the narrator describes the eagle as "ring'd with the azure world," he means that the eagle is surrounded with or encircled by the bluest of blue skies: azure is the name of this...

First, the eagle is personified, described as having "hands," and this is a big clue that he represents more than just an eagle (line 1). In addition, the fact that his hands are described as...

There is some element of surprise in the last line of "The Eagle." The eagle has been been standing still and watching in the other five lines of the poem. Then, suddenly, he falls into action....

Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Eagle" gives very specific qualities to the main subject of the poem: the eagle. Within each line, one can identify specific traits the eagle possesses. "He crasps the...

Along with Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Shelley and Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson is considered one of the premiere English Romantic poets. Romantic poetry often focused on nature. For example, one of...

The goal of paraphrase is to put the words of a text into one's own words, and, in paraphrasing poetry, we also try to make literal whatever is originally figurative; this means, then, that it is...

The critical consensus is that the eponymous eagle represents the figure of Arthur Henry Hallam, a young English poet and close friend of Tennyson. Hallam died young, and his untimely death...

In his very short poem "The Eagle," Tennyson, a poet not renowned for his brevity, briefly describes the descent of an eagle from its rock to the sea below. The eponymous eagle is presented by the...

This short little poem is loaded with literary devices that connect to the overall intention of the poem which is to present the majesty of an eagle. Here are few of note: the claws of the eagle...

These are all effective in creating images in the poem and in establishing physical point of view. He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the...

In his poem "The Eagle," Tennyson paints a vivid portrait of this majestic bird. We can picture the eagle's talons grasping the side of a cliff, digging into the rock to solidify his position. He...

The eponymous eagle doesn't do an awful lot on the mountain, which is no surprise when one considers how short the poem is. But Tennyson describes this magnificent bird of prey in such vivid terms...

In the first line, the speaker describes the eagle standing on a rock. The rock is a crag which is an uneven rock. His "hands" are crooked. The repetition of the "c" sound signifies the tough life...

To find stressed and unstressed syllables, you have to listen carefully to yourself as you read the verses, preferably aloud. Which syllables, not words, do you emphasize? For instance, consider...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson briefly but vividly describes the behavior of the titular bird in his poem "The Eagle." It is accurate to say that Tennyson's poem portrays both "the glory of nature" and...

Tennyson does not say anywhere in this very short poem who or what he is actually describing, except in the title. This is interesting because, without the title, the poem could easily be...

Let's look at this short poem of only six lines: 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...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson is considered one of the greatest English Romantic poets of the 19th century. He held, for many years, the prestigious position of Poet Laureate of England. Like all Romantic...

One reason that the eagle is referred to as a "he" instead of as an "it" is that the gendered pronoun is a clue that the poem is not necessarily just about an eagle. If you read the poem and think,...

The poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, likely describes the eagle as having "hands" rather than "claws" or "talons" because he wants to make it clear that the poem isn't just about an eagle. On the one...

In the first stanza of this poem, the eagle is personified as a king. He does not have claws, but hands, so we're to see him as a symbol of a person. He lives "close to the sun in lonely lands";...

"The Eagle" is a short poem, with only six lines of iambic tetrameter, leaving little space for description. Nonetheless, in its concentrated way, it shows Tennyson's admiration for the beauty of...

That this is not just a description of an eagle in its natural environment is shown by Tennyson's personifying of the eagle: to personify an animal or thing is to give it human traits. This eagle...

The poem 'The Eagle' by the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson is written from the point of view of an observer as we can see by the lines 'He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely...

"The Eagle" is a poem by Tennyson consisting of two three-line stanzas. The meter of the poem is iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme is AAA BBB. The punctuation follows the normal conventions of...

In "The Eagle," Tennyson provides a great deal of specific imagery to allow his reader to better visualize his subject. First, he states that the subject "clasps the crag with crooked hands." A...

The master of the skies! “The Eagle” has no equal in his domain. Alfred Lord Tennyson portrays this magnificent bird of prey with its great vision, powers of flight, and powerful talons. Tennyson...

The eagle is being compared to a thunderbolt in line six using a simile: "And like a thunderbolt he falls." In the first part of Tennyson's poem, we see the eagle perched high upon a...

"The Eagle" by Lord Alfred Tennyson is a short poem, consisting of two three-line stanzas. It is a purely descriptive poem written in the third person. The narrator is an impersonal voice...

The message of "The Eagle" is that being in a position of power, especially a position of absolute power, can be extremely lonely and even dangerous. The eagle itself is a symbol of a person in...

Tennyson's poem is a very interesting study in the natural world and those creatures who inhabit it. The opening two lines establish the exposition of an eagle set atop a high mountain. The third...

The first way in which these words work is by alliteration. The sequence ``clasps – crag - crooked – Close – crawls` repeats a harsh initial consonant, adding dramatic intensity to the poem and...